Tightrope walkers without equal, cats are like artists working without a net, whether they are climbing down out of a tree, or climbing on your knees. Their natural ease stems from several gifts: joint and muscle flexibility, an unequaled sense of balance and excellent vision that enables them to locate obstacles.
As swift as a horse, cats can adopt a gait in two or four stages and walk at four different paces: walking, ambling, trotting and galloping. Climbing is child's play for them even on seemingly smooth surfaces. His claws are powerful allies even though cats that have been de-clawed seem to manage quite well.Cats always know how to get back down the same way they came up, unless they become frightened at the top and the shouts of the owner, who is even more scared, prevents them from using their skills to get back down. Pay attention to the risks involved in attempting to get a cat down from a tree or another delicate situation. Scratching can occur and the cat will hold on tightly to his rescuer, sometimes with a death grip. Finally, the popular notion that cats always land on their feet is a myth. Granted with anything above the seventh floor, the cat will fall at a constant speed and his injuries will not be any more serious. But unfortunately, they often suffer fractures or pneumothorax at this altitude that can seriously endanger their life. At anything under one and a half meters, a cat does not have time to turn around and ends up falling on one body part or another and damaging it.
With anything in between these two heights, some parachutist cats manage to escape unharmed while others end their lives prematurely. Be careful with balconies, especially in cities, where pigeons and other birds can tempt the cat to stick its nose out a little farther than it should.
In contrast to humans, it was thought that animals had only their instincts to go by until the XVIIIth century. At the opposite extreme, the notion of cat intelligence was exaggerated and confused with what was simple learning (complex though it may be) and true intelligence (according to J.-P. Chaurand in Le Comportement du chat et ses troubles [Cat Behavior and Problems], ed. du Point Vétérinaire, 1995).
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