Cats apparent fearlessness concerning heights leads to many accidental falls. In fact so many cats are brought to veternarians for treatment after a fall, that in 1976 Dr. Gordon Robinson coined the term feline high-rise syndrome to describe the resulting pattern of injuries. Eleven years later Drs. Wayne Whitney and Cheryl Mehlhaff at the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan conducted a study over a five month period on cats brought in for treatment after a fall. They compiled a database of 115 cats who fell a range of two to thirty-two stories, primarily ending their falls on pavement. The mean fall was 5.5 stories. Three of the cats were dead upon arrival and 8 more died in the next twenty-four hours, leaving 104 living cats or about 90%. This is a remarkable statistic.
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When the height the cats fell is taken into account, it is found that only 5% of the cats who fell seven to thirty-two stories died, while 10% of the cats died who fell from two to six stories. This doubling of the survival rate as the height increases can be accounted for only by the effects of terminal velocity.