How much do you know about our most popular pet?
FELINE fantastic!
BY DR. MARTY BECKER and _GINA SPADAFORI Correspondent
This week and next, we're going to share excerpts from two of our three new books. We're starting with fun feline facts from "MeowWow: Curiously Compelling Facts, True Tales & Trivia Even Your Own Cat Won't Know" (HCI, $15).

• The first Siamese cat in the United States is said to have been a cat named Siam, given in the late 1870s as a gift to Lucy Hayes, the first lady and wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes, by the ambassador of Siam (now known as Thailand). These cats became highly sought-after in the United States and United Kingdom, and they are now among the most recognizable of breeds (even though other breeds also share the distinctive pointed markings, with darker fur on the head, legs and tail).

• The British government for many years kept cats "on the payroll" to help keep buildings free of rodents.

• The average domestic cat can run at a speed of around 30 mph. To put that in perspective, a thoro ughbred racehorse can maintain a speed of 45 mph for more than a mile. Racing greyhounds can hit just under 42 mph for about a third of a mile. But it's a cat who takes the land-speed record: The cheetah can go 70 mph for a couple hundred yards.

Like the cheetah - albeit not as fast - domestic cats are built for quick bursts of speed. While you could never outrun a dog over distance, you could outrun a cat. They quickly overheat when running and have to stop after just 30 to 60 seconds to cool down.

• A cat's heart normally beats between 120 and 220 times per minute, with a relaxed cat on the lower end of the scale. It's not unusual for a cat's heart rate to be high at the veterinarian's office because cats don't like to be away from home, and because they certainly don't like being poked and prodded by strangers.

• Not all white cats are deaf, but deafness is certainly not uncommon among them. White cats with blue eyes are more likely to be deaf than white cats with eyes of any other color.

• People crave sweets, but cats couldn't care less because the taste buds of a cat are incapable

of detecting, appreciating or triggering a craving for foods we recognize as "sweet." It's unclear whether the ancestors of cats had the ability to detect sweet and lost it, or whether cats never developed a "sweet tooth" because, as true carnivores, they didn't need it.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MOLLY PEARCE

• The common phrase "curiosity killed the cat" has probably been around far longer, but an early version of it is attributed to Shakespeare, who noted that "care killed a cat" in "Much Ado About Nothing." Along the way, "care" became "curiosity," although the meaning is largely the same: Stick your nose where it doesn't belong, and you can get into trouble.

The playwright Eugene O'Neill is credited with using the exact phrasing in use today. (Excerpted with permission of HCI Publishing.

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