Cat falls 17 stories and is relatively unscathed, owner says
A Canadian cat who jumped from a 17th-floor balcony survived, her owner says.
The Savannah-breed cat, Cleo, sneaked onto the balcony Sunday night, Joel Isfeld told CBC News.
Isfeld began a frantic search for her, but she was nowhere to be found. The distraught cat owner posted the lost-cat story to Facebook, asking for help in locating her.
Late Monday, Cleo was spotted in bushes on the terrace of an adjacent apartment building.
"I was in tears," Isfeld told CBC News. "She was shaken up, but other than that she was totally OK. No broken bones, no scrapes, just a small cut on her mouth."
Of course Cleo isn't the first feline to survive a massive fall.
Just last month, a cat named Gizmo fell 12 stories from a Manhattan penthouse terrace, but came away with a few scratches and a single broken tooth, the Associated Press reported.
In 2012, a Boston cat, Sugar, fell 19 stories, suffering some bruising but little else, the Boston Globe said.
So how do cats survive these plunges?
"It turns out our feline friends are actually well-equipped to land unscathed after falling from high places," Time magazine's Bijan Stephen explained. "When cats are three to four weeks old, they begin to develop what’s called the ‘righting reflex,' which is how cats twist in midair to land on their feet. It’s perfected at around seven weeks old."
One study cited by Time found the higher the fall, the less chance of severe injury:
A study conducted in 1987 and published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association examined 132 cats that had fallen from buildings and were brought into vets around New York Animal Medical center for treatment. It found that injuries per cat increased depending on the height the cat fell up to 7 stories, but actually decreased when the cat fell from above that threshold. The researchers speculated that this was due to the cats’ ability to right themselves and their relatively low terminal velocity.
