 Cats, being natural predators, will generally leap at
their prey, regardless of where they are jumping from. For cats
living in apartment buildings, this can lead to numerous injuries which
have been termed, High-Rise Syndrome.Surprisingly, cats falling from
lower floors have been found to suffer greater injury than those falling
from higher floors. In fact, when given prompt medical attention, cats
which sustain a fall from two to thirty-two stories have a 90% survival
rate!
According to data from veterinarians in New York, cats are most
likely to survive if they fall from a height of six stories, with
heights over seven stories being only slightly more dangerous. Clearly,
if a person were to take a spill from six stories up the
forty-mile-per-hour impact with the Earth would be rather traumatic. The
reasons why cats can better deal with such punishment are still somewhat
nebulous, but the reigning theory is three fold:
It
takes a normal cat about a two and a half feet of free-fall to orient
himself to feet-down, and it wasn't until the advent of high-speed
cameras that the acrobatics were fully understood. Much like an ice
skater controls her rate of spin by pulling in or extending her arms,
the cat first tucks in his front legs and splays out his rear legs,
allowing him to quickly situate his forequarters with the feet down. He
then reverses the procedure, extending his front legs and tucking in the
rear legs, allowing the hindquarters to rapidly twist into position
while the forequarters turn only slightly. Rear legs re-extend when in
place, and he's fully deployed.
This position is ready for landing, but it also lends the cat a
limited aerodynamic–much like the flying squirrel. The ability to
increase drag slows a cat's average terminal velocity from a person's
130mph to a much happier 60mph.
The fact that cats can twist so quickly to attain feet-down
contributes to survivability of High-Rise Syndrome, but it leads into
the importance of the third stage.
In order to perform the righting maneuver, many muscles have to fire
in fast and in sequence, and the immediate aftermath of a quick muscle
pull is tension; tension in the body, reduces the chance of surviving an
impact. The tension is why six to seven stories seems to be the prime
falling altitude: it gives the cat time to unwind after the hard twist,
and relax into the free-fall for a moment before landing.
The highest a cat has fallen and survived was forty-six stories.
But just because a cat survives a serious fall doesn't mean he's well.
Cats often undergo fractures, broken teeth, or internal injuries upon
landing, thus should always be seen by a vet after a fall. The ASPCA
notes on their website that sometimes the owners of pets that fall from
heights immediately write them off as dead, and don't bother to go and
seek out their lost critters.
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