1. Sailors used to keep a cat on board believing its behaviour was indicative of approaching weather.
2. Killing a cat was punishable by death in ancient Egypt.
3. The Norse goddess Freya rode a chariot pulled by cats.
4. During the Middle Ages Christians killed cats at every opportunity, believing them to be agents of Satan.
5. Oriental statues of cats with one paw raised or moving up and down are based on various legends of a man who walked past a temple and saw a cat with its paw raised to welcome him in. Entering into the temple saved him from a bolt of lightning that would otherwise have killed him. Some versions of the legend have more than one man, some have the cat waving its paw as if beckoning, others talk of a vicious storm rather than lightning.
6. The average lifespan of a domestic cat is 15 years.
7. No other family of predators has such a wide range of sizes: from the Black Footed Cat at 1kg, to the world record Amur Tiger at 465kg.
8. A cat’s gestation period is 9 weeks, with the average litter size being 4.
9. Cats cannot taste sweet.
10. A cat’s heart beats twice as fast as a humans.
11. Cats ears contain 32 muscles each.
12. White cats with blue eyes are prone to deafness.
13. Cats jaws can only move up and down.
14. Chocolate is poisonous to cats.
15. The heaviest recorded domestic cat weighed 21kg (46lb).
16. Compared to their body size, cats have the largest eyes of any mammal.
17. Cats brains are more similar to human brains than they are to dog brains.
18. Cats are not colour-blind. They can see blue and green, and possibly red.
19. Cats can sprint at 30mph (50km/h).
20. Cats sleep for 16 hours a day, but about 12 out of the 16 are light sleep.
21. According to this BBC article, owning a cat may help prevent heart attacks.
22. The cat flap is believed to have been invented by no less a figure than Sir Isaac Newton.
23. Cats are the most popular pets in both the USA and the UK.
24. The collective noun for cats is clowder, and for kittens it is kindle.
25. Ailurophobia is the fear of cats, ailurophilia is the love of cats.

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