Do cats really have 9 lives?

Question

but how?

Answer 1

No they don't. This is a myth started because cats can fall fom such a great height and walk away unharmed. Recently one jumped 80 feet from a tree as firefighters were trying to reach it. It survived and walked away.

Cats are very hardy and tough animals and have increased in every extreme they've been taken to.

Answer 2

According to Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase & Fable, a cat is said to have nine lives because it is "more tenacious of life than many animals."
But why nine? Nine, a trinity of trinities, is a mystical number often invoked in religion and folklore. The cat was once revered in Egypt, and this is probably where its nine lives began.
Vestiges of this ancient, cat-worshipping religion lingered in Europe until at least the middle ages.
Medieval Europe was a tough place to be a cat, and they were sometimes thrown from high towers. The origin of these rituals is obscure but the cats often survived the ordeal and seemed to walk away unscathed, much to the amazement of spectators.
The miracles of the middle ages became the science of the 19th century, when the cat's remarkable ability to survive a fall was finally explained. In 1894, the French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey held a cat upside down by its legs and dropped it. The resultant film, captured by a camera that took 60 images a second, demonstrates how a cat lands on its feet. As the cat falls, an automatic twisting reaction begins and the cat manoeuvres its head, back, legs and tail to lessen the impact. Cats, it seems, have an instinct for physics.

Answer 3

I would say no because I pushed my cat in the street to see if they had 9 lives then my cat was gone.

Answer 4

It's just another way of saying that they're resilient.

Case in point: I found a cat underneath my deck that had been poisoned by something. She was near death, weighed practically nothing and was crying out in pain. I took her to the emergency vet (I found her at 11 at night and my regular vet wasn't open) and they hooked her up to an IV and pumped her full of antibiotics. Two days and $1000 later she came home with me. Three months after that she is healthy and happy.

Answer 5

No. Every living creature has one life. Survival tendency in case of any adverse condition, may be taken as one more life and it is applicable to all lives.

Answer 6

well its easy to find out, take your beloved cat, place in microwave, turn on said microwave, wait untill cat stops fighting and screaming, open said microwave, wait for next life to start. if that cat gets up, you let me know.

Answer 7

No, of course not. They just seem to be able to avoid life threatening situations sometimes.

Answer 8

no they dont its just some stupid guy said cause he beathis cat but it took 9 beatings for it to die..... sad story

Answer 9

No. They just seem lucky that they live through certain things.

Answer 10

Nope.