Cat fell from window on his side

As the title suggests, my cat fell from a window on his side.

It’s two stories high and there’re decorative pebbles beneath with a few plants. His behaviour hasn’t changed besides that when he lies he either repositions his left leg (He fell on his left, I think) or just rises to his feet and walk away. I checked his gums, and they don’t appear abnormal.

I’m afraid he may have some internal damage. What should I do?

1 Answer 1

We have the existing question Should I take my cat to the vet after a big fall/jump? as indicated in one of the answers there, cats mostly land on their feet automatically.

If you cat fell and landed on it’s side, there is very possibly something going on prior to the fall. In other words you should be concerned that he fell and landed on his side instead of his feet, you should be more concerned about what caused him to not land on his feet.

Tomorrow is Saturday, if an emergency vet visit on Saturday is an option, check to see if there is 24 hour vet in your area, and go now.

Not the answer you’re looking for? Browse other questions tagged cats health injury or ask your own question.

Linked

Related

Hot Network Questions

Subscribe to RSS

To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader.

site design / logo © 2021 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under cc by-sa. rev 2021.4.16.39093

By clicking “Accept all cookies”, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy.

Should I worry about my cat jumping out the window?

I just bought a cat and live on the 14th floor of my building, and I realized that he doesn’t have any fear of heights like dogs do. I am really afraid that he might jump from a window.

I did some research, but could only find things like «If a cat jumps from the third floor he might survive, even with some injures» and I was like «don’t cats have any sense of height?! Why would he jump from so high?»

So, should I be worried about my cat jumping out of a window and hurting himself?

4 Answers 4

Yes you should worry, lots of bad things could happen:

The cat may get frightened or be chasing an insect and bolt for the window then fail to stop in time, slip and fall.

The cat may sleep in the windowsill in the sun, roll over, and fall.

The cat may run out on a ledge outside or jump down to someone’s air conditioner sticking out below or otherwise trap themselves someplace that would require trained rescue specialists to retrieve them.

Cats are thought of as extremely coordinated and agile but they slip, trip, fall and fail in estimating jump distances all the time.

Cats don’t purposefully fall from heights, but it can happen accidentally in the ways that Beo’s answer states. You can see dozens of videos of cats falling short distances on youtube by searching «cat fall», so it’s not difficult to imagine the same mistakes being made even when the stakes are much higher.

Cats falling from apartment buildings has been called «high rise syndrome», since veternarians have noticed a tendancy for cats to be less injured when falling from 6-8 stories than from 1-2 stories. The thought is that a longer fall time gives the cat more time to flip its body to land on its feet. However, it may be that the cats who die from the longer falls are not taken to the veternarian, so it’s difficult to know the truth from observational studies.

What we do know is that injuries are common no matter what the fall height. In one observational study, «Ninety percent of the cats had some form of thoracic [heart/lung] trauma», and in another «Falls from the seventh or higher stories, are associated with more severe injuries and with a higher incidence of thoracic trauma.»

Clearly, you should take some types of precautions to protect your cat. The ASPCA recommends the following steps:

• To fully protect your pets, you’ll need to install snug and sturdy screens in all your windows.
• If you have adjustable screens, please make sure that they are tightly wedged into window frames.
• Note that cats can slip through childproof window guards—these don’t provide adequate protection!

Who, What, Why: How do cats survive falls from great heights?

A cat in the US city of Boston survived a fall from a 19-storey window and only bruised her chest. How do cats survive falls from such great heights?

The cat’s owner Brittney Kirk, a nurse, left the window open a crack on Wednesday morning to give Sugar some air. Sugar got out and either fell or leapt off the ledge and hit a patch of grass and mulch.

An animal rescue service found her and traced her back to Ms Kirk through a microchip embedded in her skin.

«She’s a tough little kitty,» Ms Kirk told the Boston Globe newspaper.

Cats’ remarkable ability to survive falls from great heights is a simple and predictable matter of physics, evolutionary biology, and physiology, veterinarians and biologists say.

«This recent story isn’t much of a surprise,» says Jake Socha, a biomechanist at Virginia Tech university.

«We do know that animals exhibit this behaviour, and there have been lots of records of these cats surviving.»

With scientists unwilling to toss cats off buildings for experimental observation, science has been unable systematically to study the rate at which they live after crashing to the ground.

In a 1987 study of 132 cats brought to a New York City emergency veterinary clinic after falls from high-rise buildings, 90% of treated cats survived and only 37% needed emergency treatment to keep them alive. One that fell 32 stories onto concrete suffered only a chipped tooth and a collapsed lung and was released after 48 hours.

From the moment they’re in the air to the instant after they hit the ground, cats’ bodies are built to survive high falls, scientists say.

They have a relatively large surface area in proportion to their weight, thus reducing the force at which they hit the pavement.

Cats reach terminal velocity, the speed at which the downward tug of gravity is matched by the upward push of wind resistance, at a slow speed compared to large animals like humans and horses.

For instance, an average-sized cat with its limbs extended achieves a terminal velocity of about 60mph (97km/h), while an average-sized man reaches a terminal velocity of about 120mph (193km/h), according to the 1987 study by veterinarians Wayne Whitney and Cheryl Mehlhaff.

Cats are essentially arboreal animals: when they’re not living in homes or in urban alleys, they tend to live in trees.

Sooner or later, they’re going to fall, biologists say. Cats, monkeys, reptiles and other creatures will jump for prey and miss, a tree limb will break, or the wind will knock them over, so evolution has rendered them supremely capable of surviving falls.

«Being able to survive falls is a critical thing for animals that live in trees, and cats are one of them,» says Dr Socha. «The domestic cat still contains whatever suite of adaptations they have that have enable cats to be good up in trees.»

Through natural selection, cats have developed a keen instinct for sensing which way is down, analogous to the mechanism humans use for balance, biologists say.

Then — if given enough time — they are able to twist their bodies like a gymnast, astronaut or skydiver and spin their tails in order to position their feet under their bodies and land on them.

«Everything that lives in trees has what we call an aerial righting reflex,» says Robert Dudley, a biologist at the animal flight laboratory at the University of California — Berkeley.

Cats can also spread their legs out to create a sort of parachute effect, says Andrew Biewener, a professor of organismal and evolutionary biology at Harvard University, although it is unclear how much this slows the rate of descent.

«They splay out their legs, which is going to expand their surface area of the body, and that increases the drag resistance,» he says.

When they do land, cats’ muscular legs — made for climbing trees — act as shock absorbers.

«Cats have long, compliant legs,» says Jim Usherwood of the structure and motion lab at the Royal Veterinary College. «They’ve got decent muscles. In that they’re able to jump quite well, the same muscles divert energy into decelerating rather than breaking bones.»

The springy legs increase the distance over which the force of the collision with the ground dissipates, says Dr Biewener.

«The impact forces are much higher in stiff collisions,» he says. «If they can increase the collision time over a longer period, that reduces the impact force.»

And a cat’s legs are angled under the body rather than extended downward, like human or horse legs.

«You’re not transmitting the forces really directly,» says Dr Socha.

«If the cat were to land with its legs directly under him in a column and hold him stiff, those bones would all break. But they go off to the side and the joints then bend, and you’re now taking that energy and putting it into the joints and you’re getting less of a force at the bone itself.»

However, house cats in urban or suburban areas tend to be overweight and in less than peak physical condition, warns Steve Dale, a cat behaviour consultant who is on the board of the Winn Feline Foundation, which supports cat health research.

That detracts from their ability to right themselves in midair, he says.

«This cat was lucky,» he says. «But many, if not most, would have severe lung damage, would have a broken leg or two or three or four, maybe have damage to the tail, and maybe more likely than any of that a broken jaw or dental damage.

«The lessons learned: screens, please, on the windows.»

Reporting by Daniel Nasaw in Washington

Keeping Your Cat Safe from Falling Out of High Windows

Published: July 5, 2017

Updated: September 14, 2020

This page may contain affiliate links, for which we earn a commission for qualifying purchases. This is at no cost to you, but it helps fund the free education that we have on our website. Read more here.

In one week alone, eight cats were injured after falling from high rises when warming weather in 2015 resulted in more people leaving their windows open. In fact, cats fall from windows so often that veterinarians have given it a name: “High-Rise Syndrome.”

Sunny skies and warm weather typically result in a great day for both people and pets. But warm weather also encourages people to open their windows. For cat owners who live in buildings with more than two stories, this can lead to disaster when their cat falls from that open window.

High-Rise Syndrome is a term coined by veterinarians at The Animal Medical Center in New York City due to the number and nature of injuries they were seeing from pets — especially cats — falling out of windows or off of fire escapes. The term came about in the 1980s after the hospital admitted 132 cases of cats injured by falls in just five months!

More recently, Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness experienced the tragic loss of his cat, Bug, after falling from an open window.

A post shared by Jonathan Van Ness (@jvn) on Aug 7, 2019 at 11:37am PDT

Cats that fall from heights of between 2–7 stories typically sustain more, and worse, injuries than those that fall from greater heights. Also, the true extent of injuries sometimes isn’t seen until 48–72 hours later. This is because lung and/or heart contusions (a.k.a. «bruising») can take that long to reach their peak extent of damage.

How Far Cats Can Fall Without Injury

Even though cats always land on their feet (check out the slow motion video below), and they have a proclivity for high perches, it actually does not take much of a fall for a cat to sustain severe injuries.

The term “High-Rise Syndrome” itself describes trauma sustained after cats fall from any height above two stories. So even if you think your window isn’t that high, it can still be high enough for your cat to sustain a serious injury.

Interestingly, and likely because of their flexibility and their uncanny ability to right their body and relax during falls, cats that fall from heights over seven stories typically sustain fewer and less severe injuries than those that fall from heights between two and seven stories. Obviously, that’s not to say that you should let them do it! Cats that fall from any significant height can suffer painful or fatal injuries.

Injuries Cats Sustain from Falling Out of Windows

Back when the term High-Rise Syndrome was first coined, a study published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association found that, of the 132 cases reviewed, a whopping 90% of the cats had some form of chest injury (thoracic trauma). And more than half (55%) had breathing troubles after their falls — large falls can often result in lung bruising (pulmonary contusions) in cats.

Other injuries include:

• Broken bones
• Facial trauma
• Brain swelling
• Shock
• Joint dislocation
• Jaw fractures
• Fractures to the roof (palate) of the mouth
• Bruising of the heart (myocardial contusions)
• Heart rhythm problems
• Broken teeth
• Urinary bladder rupture
• Internal bleeding

Amazingly, many cats can still survive and do quite well. However, the treatment process can be long, painful, and expensive and sometimes the true and full extent of a cat’s injuries isn’t seen until 48-72 hours after their fall. Costs for treating severe High-Rise Syndrome cases are often in the range of $2,000 to over $5,000, and these pets are typically in the hospital for several days. These poor guys require true intensive care and monitoring, often requiring supplemental oxygen therapy, serious pain control, (multiple) surgeries, and temporary feeding tubes.

How to Prevent Your Cat from Falling Out of an Open Window

High-Rise Syndrome is, of course, extremely preventable.

Cats often wind up in this predicament after having been startled off their windowsill perch. This is especially true for wide-open windows that lack any sort of protective barrier, such as bars or a screen.

For example, if your cat is lounging on the sill of an open window and the vacuum or blender starts up, it could cause them to jump or lose their balance. They could also lose their balance while jumping onto a windowsill or deck/balcony railing, or while hunting passing bugs, flies, or birds near an open window or on a fire escape. Actually, even fire escapes might not prevent a serious fall. The surface is often slippery, and a leaping cat can easily fly past the fire escape landing. Indeed, even a window screen might not be enough to prevent a fall.

Double check screens. Some might pop out easier than you think.

Protect Windows: Install well-fitting and secure window screens on any windows that you plan to leave open
Test all window screens by pressing your hand firmly against them — you’ll be surprised by how easily some screens will pop out.

Limit Openings: If possible, open the top portion of your windows, rather than the bottom.

Close Up: Close all windows before leaving your home and/or before making loud noises such as:

• Turning on the blender
• Vacuuming
• Watching loud movies or TV

Keep an Eye Out: Don’t leave your pets on your balcony unobserved

• Never let them jump onto the railings
• Move patio furniture and tall items away from the railings to prevent cats from getting to a level where they are more likely to fall

Plan for Play: Close your windows before playing with your dog in the house (not only might your dog jump after a ball that bounces out an open window, but their running could also startle your cat from their window perch.)

What to Do if Your Cat Falls Out of a Window

If your pet does fall out of a window, bring them immediately to your veterinarian for evaluation and treatment. The list of potential injuries they may have suffered goes far beyond broken bones, and many of them aren’t likely to be obvious. There is no at-home treatment, and many of these cats are in extreme pain (whether they show you or not). Please don’t try to give them your pain medications — it’s a recipe for disaster — just g et them to the vet immediately for evaluation and safe/effective treatment.

Related Articles

Comments

Please do not ask emergency or other specific medical questions about your pets in the blog comments. As an online informational resource, Preventive Vet is unable to and does not provide specific medical advice or counseling. A thorough physical exam, patient history, and an established veterinary-patient-client relationship is required to provide specific medical advice. If you are worried that your pet is having an emergency or if you have specific medical questions related to your pet’s current or chronic medical conditions, please contact or visit your veterinarian, an animal-specific poison control hotline, or your local emergency veterinary care center.

Please share your experiences and stories, your opinions and feedback about this blog, or what you’ve learned that you’d like to share with others.