Some more cat facts!

Some more cat facts!

1.) A cats nose has catnip receptors! 

Have you ever wondered why cat nip lulls felines into a trance? Catnip contains several chemical compounds, including one called nepetalactone, this is the chemical that your kitty detects with receptors in their mouth and nose! 

2.) If you love cats, you're an ailurophile

Looking to elevate your vocabulary? Try using the word ailurophile in a casual conversation. It’s a fancy word for "cat lover," and it’s derived from the Greek word for cat, ailouros, and the suffix -phile, meaning "lover." Conversely, the word ailurophobe—a combination of ailouros plus phobe—describes someone who hates cats.

3.) Cats might be marking you as territory when they massage you

Experts haven’t figured out why cats like to knead, but they’ve come up with several possible explanations, one being that your kitty is trying to mark their "territory" (that’s you!) with the scent glands in their paws. And since kittens knead their mama’s belly to stimulate milk production, there’s also a chance that they carry this behavior into adulthood—a phenomenon known as a "neotenic behavior."

4.) There is a cat painting worth close to $1 Million! 

In 2015, a 6-by-8.5-foot oil painting billed as the "world’s largest cat painting" sold at auction for more than $820,000. It’s called My Wife's Lovers, and it once belonged to a wealthy philanthropist named Kate Birdsall Johnson. She loved felines so much that she owned dozens (some even say hundreds) of kitties, and commissioned a painter to capture her Turkish Angoras and Persians in their natural element.