Without incurring any injuries, a cat falls six stories and punches a hole in a car's rear window

NEWS AND COMMENT-BANGKOK, THAILAND: A tabby-and-white male domestic cat weighing 8.5 kg living in a flat on the sixth floor of a high-rise building fell off that building and bounced off a balcony on the third floor before smashing into the rear window of a car parked underneath the building which entirely shattered the window but the cat walked free without a scratch.

 The MG car. Image: Facebook (Apiwat Toyothaka).

Shifu after the fall. He's fine. Image: Facebook (Apiwat Toyothaka).

That sums up the story in one sentence but I'll add a bit of detail. His name is Shifu. The owner of the car, Apiwat Toyothaka, shared his experience on Facebook on May 27. He said that he was surprised to discover the rear window of his car smashed to pieces at 7 AM. 

He told a news media that the cat had fallen from the sixth floor as described. He found Shifu hiding under his car after he had jumped out through the massive hole in the rear window that he had created.

For some reason which hasn't been explained, Shifu was hanging by his nails to the balcony of his sixth-floor apartment. It looks as though he was taking a risk that he shouldn't have been taking. You know what cats are like sometimes. And he fell. Some people think that cats are so good at climbing and their balance is so good that they never fall. They do sometimes.

Shifu was x-rayed and the scans showed no broken bones. It's not actually completely true that he didn't suffer any injuries because he lost to claws although that minor injury was not due to the fall but I presume due to the fact that he was hanging on by those to claws until they broke.

He is behaving entirely normally and eating and toileting in the usual way. He belongs to another resident in the condominium that the car owner apparently knows as he lives there as well.

WATCH: Cat survives leap from burning building. Two reasons why and how.

This is a classic example of how a domestic cat both relies on their skill to slow down the speed of descent when they fall from a great height by fanning out their body like a flying squirrel and on good luck. You can see clearly that this black cat falls onto a nice, spongy patch of long green, lush grass. It didn't have to be like that. It was pure good luck. Often they fall onto concrete. 

We all know about the self-righting mechanism of the domestic cat. There is, actually, an optimum height for a domestic cats to fall which maximises their chance of survival. This gives the cat the time to reach the slowest velocity and of course to fully self-right so that they land on all fours. They end up, if injured, with broken jaws and legs and chest injuries.

RELATED: Longest non-lethal fall in feline history.

Many domestic cat survive these high falls even onto a hard surface but many don't. I remember in Singapore they have 250 domestic cat falls like this from high rise apartments annually and about half of them die. In Singapore a very high percentage of citizens live in high-rise apartments which are government owned. There is clearly a need in Singapore to address this catastrophe.

RELATED: Singapore: 250 cats fall from high rise apartments every year. Fifty percent die on impact.

It is a pointer to one of the great dangers of domestic cats living in apartment blocks. How do cats end up falling out of windows from these apartments? I can think of a couple of reasons. There is a balcony and they are allowed to go on the balcony. There are no protective barriers on the balcony and cats being inquisitive push their luck and jump up onto the railings and fall off. They make a mistake essentially. Cats are very good at not making mistakes and they are very athletic but they are not 100% guaranteed to achieve their objective. They take risks.

Another possibility is that their owners play with their cat. The window is open. The window is quite low lying near the floor. The cat jumps up excitedly. The cat jumps through the window, inadvertently. Bye-bye cat 😢. 

There are obviously many other possibilities but, of course, ultimately it comes down to human caregiving. How good is it? How much attention is paid to the possibility of their cat falling off a balcony or out of a window to the ground? These accidents can only happen ultimately through human carelessness.

Video caption: A dramatic leap to safety by a frightened feline was caught on camera by Chicago firefighters. After bouncing on the grass, the cat just walked away.

Cat climbing the outside of apartment block falls 6 stories and runs off

This is one of those classic and extraordinary domestic cat feats of apparent survival. A black domestic cat is climbing the outside wall of a very tall apartment block and he is six stories up on my reckoning including the ground floor. Note: I have assumed he is male for the sake of convenience and to avoid calling him 'it'.

Cat climbing the outside of apartment block falls 6 stories and runs off

He's actually clawing his way up the outside wall which is obviously rough and which allows him to grab hold of the wall with his claws. But he finds it's all got too much for him because he's going nowhere and he falls off and sails to the beach below. 

This is a soft landing, thankfully, which allows him to run off. Although he hit it at 60 mph! We don't know why the cat was climbing the outside of this building. It would seem that he went onto the balcony of the fifth floor and then started to climb up the wall. The motivation to do this? No idea, except perhaps he felt confined to the apartment and wanted to get out of it and thought he could make it to the top of the building which wouldn't have been any good in any case. 

As you see him fall, he fans out in legs to create maximum air resistance which is absolutely typical and reached the terminal velocity which is considerably less than it would have been if he had not fanned out his body. My research indicates that domestic cats reach a terminal velocity of about 60 miles an hour. 

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In other words, the velocity is at a maximum and it stays there. That is why, by the way, that when they fall further distances and hit the terminal velocity, they can sometimes incur less serious injuries. It takes a while for them to turn and fan out their bodies to slow themselves. 

 You can see a large crowd watching and filming but doing nothing about it. Perhaps they could do nothing about it and felt that as the beach was below, he would be all right. Although there was no absolute certainty that he would clear the ornamental flower containers (that is what they look like) at the base of the building. He did thankfully.

He ran off but this does not automatically mean that he was not injured. Cats can run for a while even when badly injured. I suspect though that he is not badly injured. They often suffer cracked jaws of ribs.

via Gfycat

Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

Cat in Chicago forced to jump from five floors and survives. Here's how.

The caption to the video from The Guardian: "A cat in Chicago has survived after jumping out of a fifth-floor window to escape an apartment fire. Chicago fire department personnel were taking a video of the exterior of the building as firefighters were extinguishing the blaze when a black cat appeared through billowing smoke at a broken window. The feline briefly tested the side of the building with its front paws, then jumped. The cat survived the leap uninjured..."

So, how do domestic cats fall five stories and more without harming themselves? Well, the first point to make is that this cat fell onto grass and as you see the entire fall, you can see the contact. The cat actually bounced off the grass indicating that the ground was quite spongy which certainly had a big beneficial effect.

Notwithstanding that, you will find that domestic cats can fall this kind of height onto concrete and still survive. You probably know by now that they manage to do this because they fan out their legs creating a parachute effect because there is quite a lot of skin between their torso and the upper part of their legs. They become somewhat like a flying squirrel. They reach terminal velocity. In fact, they are safer when they fall from a slightly higher height because it allows the parachute effect to work better.

Cat falls off high rise. Photo in public domain.

That said many cats die in these falls and I wrote an article about cats falling from Singapore apartment blocks on this particular topic. Below are two more selected pages on the topic of domestic cats falling great heights. The last point to make is that they always right themselves by twisting and therefore they fall on their four legs which also helps to ensure that they generally suffer relatively minor injuries normally from these sorts of falls. Although this is not universally the outcome.

It is remarkable in one way, though, that a domestic cat can jump voluntarily five floors up knowing that they are going to have to fall that great distance. They seem to realise that they are going to survive or they believe that it is possible.

• Cat Falling
• Highest a cat has fallen and survived.

Cat Falling: Heart Stopping Video

Well, I hope you found it as heart stopping as I found it. It is a bit shocking. We don't know if the cat was uninjured despite running away. Cats do this even when injured. Such a fall may have injured he chest and/or chin.

I'd be surprised if he/she was uninjured. What was she doing trying to climb that wall? And what is the person doing recording the moment? Was it set up and why did the cat turn near the top?

He actually recorded it using a motor driven still camera as this is an animated gif file, not a true video although I call it that for convenience.

Feline High-rise Syndrome

Feline High-rise Syndrome  refers to the range of injuries that a domestic cat will suffer when he or she falls from a great height off the balcony or through a window of an apartment.

People living in apartments in high-rise towers with their domestic cats need to be very careful when their cat goes out onto the balcony because they cannot assume that their cat knows best.  Domestic cats make mistakes notwithstanding that they are incredible athletes and very skilled at manoeuvring along narrow ledges at great heights.  

Also cats like to sit at apartment windows looking outside.  Is the window closed?  Is the window secure?  Perhaps there is some sort of device inserted into an open window which is loose and through which a cat could fall.

Singapore: 250 cats fall from high rise apartments every year. Fifty percent die on impact.

Although it is probably quite rare (but not in Singapore), cats and kittens can and do fall out of apartments.  Sometimes they're killed on impact with the ground.

However, it may surprise you that cats are not only excellent climbers they are also superb at falling from a great height, thankfully, but don't test it whatever you do.

Apparently, 90% of cats that fall out of apartments survive.  They survive because when they impact the ground they are relaxed.  Also, the domestic cat will fan out his or her body like a flying squirrel to break the fall and the terminal velocity for a domestic cat falling from an apartment balcony is 53 mph while skydivers fall at 140 mph, as I recall.

The interesting thing about this is that if a cat falls off a balcony between the second and seventh floor and survive the fall, their injuries may well be greater than if the cat has fallen from the eighth floor and higher.

This is because when falling from a lower floor the cat does not reached terminal velocity and because of that the vestibular system in the inner ear tells the cat to brace itself for a landing in which case the legs are stiffer, whereas once the cat reaches terminal velocity the vestibular system does not send this message whereupon the cat is in a relaxed state.  This ensures that less bones are broken (src: The Cat Its Behavior, Nutrition & Health).

The sort of bones that are broken are of course legs and jawbones.  The lower jaw hits the ground at about the same time as the legs and is pushed up into the upper jaw causing fractures and injuries to the face.  The chest can also be injured and this is a priority for a veterinarian to deal with as it can be life-threatening.

The remarkable fact, though, is that when falling from such a height, perhaps 100 feet, the can is able to survive.

Cats on balconies should wear a harness and be tethered to the wall so they cannot go over the edge (sounds gross I know but safe). Windows should be firmly closed and locked. Or if open, secure systems put in place to keep the cat safe.

Do cats fall off balconies?

Cat falling 40 feet from tree to a lawn. He was unharmed.

Do cats fall off balconies? Yes, they do. Cat owners think that cats will always be smart enough and athletic enough to never fall from a balcony. They are smart and great climbers but they make mistakes like the rest of us. The kind of mistake might be incorrectly assessing the rigidity of an object on the balcony. It gives way and the cat falls.

Many broken bones are caused by falls. The most common in warmer weather are falls from apartment windows that have a screen and the cat pushes the screen open thinking that it is fixed. It gives way and the cat falls.

The severity of the injury suffered depends partly on the height of the fall. Paradoxically, the higher the fall (to a limit), the lesser the injury as the cat has time to right himself and then get into a gliding position like a flying squirrel. This slows the descent (see photo above).

Bones broken as a result of a fall from a good height are:

• femur
• pelvis
• jaw
• spine (less frequent)
• skull (less frequent)

Blind cat on open roof top.

Often, there is shock and blood loss and internal organ injuries. Cats injured in a fall might be in pain - handle with care and immobilize the cat before taking to the vet.

Cats should not be allowed out on a balcony without a careful assessment of its safety for a cat. A balcony cat enclosure is nice!

I remember seeing a blind cat on a flat roof in Malta. The roof had no edges, just a straight fall. He had fallen once and survived. See the photo. He had great hearing.