1. You can tell a lot about a cat’s mood from its tail. Straight up with a hooked tip is a friendly greeting, according to National Geographic.¹ Tail straight up, arched back – the Halloween pose – means kitty is fearful. A tail that’s whipping around means your cat is nervous or stressed and potentially aggressive – time to back off!
2. They can’t taste sweets. That’s because cats lack one of the two genes necessary to make the sweetness receptor, according to allaboutcats.com.²
3. While cat teeth look quite different from a human’s pearly whites, there is one major similarity: Both have two successive sets of teeth. A cat’s first set, the deciduous or baby teeth, comes in when they’re about 2 weeks old; they start falling out at around 3 months to make way for the permanent teeth. If properly cared for, a cat’s permanent teeth should last a lifetime.
4. Cats use their whiskers to “feel” the world around them in an effort to determine which small spaces they can fit into, like closets and tiny boxes. This is why you should never cut their whiskers.
5. When your cat slow-blinks at you, it’s a sign of trust and contentedness.
6. Cats have “night sight” mode in their eyes. When light enters a cat’s eyes, it passes through the retina where light-sensing cells absorb it. The unabsorbed light reaches the tapetum lucidem, which bounces it back to the retina and lets it take in more light. Cats can, therefore, function in the dark with only one-sixth of the light we need.
7. All felines, from baby kittens to ferocious jungle cats, have sandpaper-like tongues. That rough texture comes in handy when a cat’s cleaning its fur and, in the case of the bigger jungle cats, a rough-hewn tongue helps tear meat off the bones of its prey
8. Cats beat us in the bone department with 230 bones; humans only have 206
9. Cats spend up to 1/3 of their waking hours grooming