December is full of celebrations. Did you know that it is also National Cat Lovers’ Month?

This gives us the opportunity to honour the beauty, smarts and sass of our feline friends.

Cats were first brought to the Americas in colonial times to get rid of rodents.

According to the American Veterinary Medical Foundation, 25 percent of households own a cat.

Tragically, cat over-population remains an issue. Cats have higher euthanasia rates than dogs due to the high numbers living in animal shelters.

This National Cat Lovers’ Month, consider saving a life and adopting a cat in need from your local animal shelter.

Fun Facts about Cats

• Cats are believed to be the only mammals who don’t taste sweetness.

• Cats are near-sighted, but their peripheral vision and night vision are much better than humans.

• Cats generally have 18 toes - five toes on each front paw and four toes on each back paw.

• Cats’ claws all curve downward, which means that they can’t climb down trees head-first. Instead, they must back down the trunk.

• Cats can rotate their ears 180 degrees and their hearing is five times keener than that of a human adult.

• Cats can jump up to six times their length.

• Cats use their long tails for balance when they are jumping or walking along narrow edges.

• Cats walk like camels and giraffes. They move both of their right feet first, then move both of their left feet. No other animals walk this way.

• A polydactyl cat is a cat with a congenital physical anomaly called polydactyly, which causes the cat to be born with more than the usual number of toes on one or more of its paws.

• Cats are crepuscular, which means that they are most active at dawn and dusk.

• Cats are fastidious about their bathroom. If you have more than one cat, you should have one litter box for each.

• Cats can spend up to a third of their waking hours grooming.

• Your cat’s grooming process stimulates blood flow to their skin, regulates their body temperature and helps them relax.

• A house cat’s genome is 95.6 percent tiger and they share many behaviours with their jungle ancestors. These behaviours include scent marking by scratching, prey stalking, prey play, pouncing, chinning and urine marking.

• Cats have the largest eyes relative to their head size of any mammal.

• Each cat’s nose print is unique, much like human fingerprints.

• Most cats have no eyelashes.

• A group of cats is called a “clowder”.

• When cats grimace, they are usually “taste-scenting”. They have an extra organ in the roof of their mouth called the “Jacobson’s organ”, which helps them taste-sense the air.