How come cats are said to have 9 lives?

Answer 1

One theory on the origin of this expression is that in ancient times nine was a lucky number because it is the Trinity of Trinities. As cats seem able to escape injury time and time again, this lucky number seemed suited to the cat. While in most countries the cat is said to have nine lives, in Arab and Turkish proverbs poor puss has a mere seven lucky lives and in Russia, is said to survive nine deaths.

Answer 2

the cat is actually the "cat of 9 tails" which is an old fashioned whip for flogging people as a punishment

the whip had 9 strands so each stroke caused 9 slashes

if 1 broke there were still 8 others so the saying started about the cat (whip) having 9 lives (strands)

this is also the origin of "no room to swing a cat" and "thats let the cat out of the bag"

Answer 3

Cats are said to have 9 lives because they often get into situations where any other animal would not escape, but they tend to survive.
I'm sure there is some historic reason for the number 9, but it is mostly because they are such curious creatures that seem to get out of almost anything, or survive some of the most harmful situations.

Answer 4

Because a cat can live through almost anything except a heart attack. Mine lived on nothing but mice and birds, I'm assuming, without contracting a disease, when I went away to college and didn't take him with me, a feline immunodeficiency virus diagnosis, which I still think was bogus, and a couple of falls from really high trees, but died when he underwent an attack that my dad thinks was a heart attack. You can't tell me he didn't have nine lives. If he didn't, he wouldn't have survived his first year, let alone ten more after that.

Answer 5

i dont know maybe cause its hard to kill a cat ,, i had a cat that got in the engine twice and lived both times ,one time we had to feed it with a seringe it was so bad hurt , we shut doors on it hard ,steped on him many times ,,,,,ah poor thing huh

Answer 6

People Who Say That Are just DeeDeeDee

Answer 7

The guy who made up the phrase was missing a finger.

Answer 8

because,cats get scared easy!

Answer 9

Because they always land on their feet, on the 10th time, they're finished.

Answer 10

ohh cuz people r stupid