How High Is Too High For Jumping Down?

[Larkspur]

We have a loft and it's a fantastic playground for Lucy but after an incident last week I'm a little worried about heights. I wasn't there but my husband said she got up to a shelf and jumped or fell down. He swears she nearly broke a leg. I thought being a cat, she'll be fine, he's being paranoid. But it is 2m (about 6 and a half feet) up. I have blocked off the room for now as there's shelving to 4m in that room.
She is a bit of a dare devil and does really stupid jumps. She's young and I assume she'll probably grow out of it, please correct me if I'm wrong. So how high is too high and can she be taught to get down safely?

 

[1CatOverTheLine]

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The question is really rather circumstance-subjective. You might be interested in reading this brief article, since it will primarily answer your question:

https://www.quora.com/From-how-high-could-a-cat-fall-onto-hard-ground-and-not-be-injured

Because of their natural instinct to splay their limbs in a fall, a cat's terminal velocity is roughly half that of an Human, and their skeletal compression resiliency factor is higher that ours by nearly two orders of magnitude. The T.V. survival rate for cats is roughly 90%, from a veterinary accident report compilation taken from cats falling from 6 to 32 storeys. The highest observed jump, as far as I know, was 46 storeys (roughly 150 meters), from which the cat simply walked away. There's oft-repeated anecdotal evidence (allegedly corroborated by at least two witnesses and one veterinarian) of a cat having leapt out of one of the southwest penthouse windows of 432 Park in New York, this past year, and having suffered only a fracture to one radius. The window height is 1,290 feet, or four tenths of a kilometer.

"Twelve feet," or, "four meters" seems to be the consensus among veterinary surgeons as regards what's considered a "safe" jump for the average domestic cat with no osteo issues and no history of broken bones. My Father's Siamese regularly jumped from his second floor balcony onto the roof of his car - about fourteen feet vertically - ran 'round to the side door, and meowed loudly until he let her in, after which she'd dash up the stairs and immediately repeat the balcony jump.

Another article which might help may be found here:

Feline Physics: Why Cats Can Survive Falls From Great Heights


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[Larkspur]

Thanks for the reply. It turns out the shelf was loose! I fixed it but she's never actually gone back up there so it may have been too scary.

 

[PushPurrCatPaws]

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The question is really rather circumstance-subjective. ...

"Twelve feet," or, "four meters" seems to be the consensus among veterinary surgeons as regards what's considered a "safe" jump for the average domestic cat with no osteo issues and no history of broken bones. ...

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I think that is the key there, the noting any osteo issues, etc.

 

[A. Jones]

We have a loft and it's a fantastic playground for Lucy but after an incident last week I'm a little worried about heights. I wasn't there but my husband said she got up to a shelf and jumped or fell down. He swears she nearly broke a leg. I thought being a cat, she'll be fine, he's being paranoid. But it is 2m (about 6 and a half feet) up. I have blocked off the room for now as there's shelving to 4m in that room.
She is a bit of a dare devil and does really stupid jumps. She's young and I assume she'll probably grow out of it, please correct me if I'm wrong. So how high is too high and can she be taught to get down safely?

One of my cats I had loved to climb on top of fridges and jump off when he was a kitten, he did this quite a bit and continued to do so up until he was 4. Around when he turned 6 he started having back problems, which eventually led to the loss of using his back legs and caused him severe back pain. Talking to my vet after having the X-rays of his back done, he said the injuries my cat had are common for cats who repeatedly fall/jump from tall heights. We had to put him to sleep in March when he was 9 from his various back issues. The biggest thing I think I learned from that is it is always better to err on the side of caution when it comes to heights of cat toys/perches. If you know your cat is a little wild, I would make sure she doesn't have a way to get on the shelving.

 

[susanm9006]

If the shelving allows her to jump from the loft to the shelf to the floor then she should be fine. If not, you might be able to add more shelving to allow her an safe path up and down.