I’ve been reading at some point some studies of cat walk. The unique feature about this family of species is that they always put their back leg steps on the footprint of the front legs.
Another seemingly minor trait just came as a surprise to me, a cat always moves forward the opposite leg, like back right + front left. Out of the blue I noticed that when I’m jogging I make the same alternations, right leg + left hand, lol, it sounds we share some genes.
I’ve never seen any of our Birmans, and we have had five now, walk or run in a straight line. They get wherever they are going to, but never without meandering.
It’s not about them walking in a strait line, but they magically step with tail foots on the previous spots, which was always a fascinating study with the conclusion that as a predators they just minimize the chance of any noise stepping on already tested spots
It’s quite noticeable in the snow if you look at where the cats have walked, you can clearly see that they step in the same place with different paws.
Really not difficult. Catwalk can easily be learned https://youtu.be/QJP8vEM0ITQ
Cats are truly incredible, this is what spatial awareness and 20ms response times look like.
If you wrap a small towel around the waist of a cat, it will walk a few steps and fall over, then get up again and do the same. (I did this experiment humanely once on my Scottish Fold I owned 30 years ago). I hypothesised that cat’s senses are so refined, logic conflicts can confuse them - in this case, the eyes said they were in an open space, but the body senses indicated they were confined..causing them to fall over.
If you put a banana peel on the back of a cat, it’ll think it’s trying to go through a low obstacle and it’ll crawl on its belly to get clear of it.
This scientific experiment was executed some time in the distant past in Brixton, London. No animals or scientists were harmed in the experiment, even though the scientists were heavily under the influence.