Image credit: Clarissa Rossarola

Cats are one of the most common household pets. These adorable creatures are playful, huggable and notoriously independent. They make great companions for adults and playmates for children. What makes them more fascinating is the interesting and well-known sound, the purr that they make. 

Although purring is a common sound from cats, you may have wondered why they make it. It can happen at any time of the day, much like humans when they sigh.

Some theorize that cats purr when threatened, even though they are not guarded against like some animals such as groundhogs, where people use live trap groundhog setups to keep them away from their properties. Cats are usually considered welcoming creatures, but what's causing your furry friend to give off this sound? Let's take a look at some interesting facts about why cats purr.

How Does a Purr Happen?

Purring is caused by a motion coming from the cat's central nervous structure. As the cat inhales and exhales, the vocal muscles in the larynx tremble and produce the sound burst that occurs every 30 to 40 milliseconds. This process produces the purring sound. The frequency of purring also depends on the cat's weight, sex and age. Research has found that cats purr in a range of situations.


Purring for Pleasure

Many are aware that cats purr due to experiencing pleasure like when they are nursing babies or when stroked or petted by a human. Purring can also occur during a cat's sleep or when it is rolling. It can also occur around familiar cats.

Purring for Pain

Cats can also purr while under pressure from stressful times like recovering from an injury or when in pain. Therefore all purring cats are not content with their current situations. When a cat is brought in for treatment at a hospital after a tragedy like being hit by a car, a cat may produce a purr. Interestingly, larger cats such as the leopard, jaguar and lion do not purr.

In general cats can purr in good times and in bad, but it's mainly associated with human interactions or positive cat exchanges.

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It might be startling to be licked by a feline and find out that their tongues are incredibly rough. Every cat has this feature, and many people who have felt it mistakenly think their abrasive tongue developed to help them clean their coat. It makes sense, since cats spend a lot of time grooming themselves with their tiny tongues.

This is absolutely wrong. Cats have rough tongues in order to use them like miniature sanders to help them rip the flesh off their victims. Cats are killing machines, after all. They’re loaded with natural weapons, such as their marquee retractable claws on each of their toes. The claws are used to take down their prey in conjunction with a neck bite, but once an animal is dead its pelt needs to come off so that the cat can get to the fleshy goodness contained within.

Of course, this isn’t immediately apparent in your everyday house cat. You’re much more likely to see a lion literally lick the flesh off a gnu carcass than see a cat messing about with a small kill.

How does it work?

The cat tongue is covered in tiny reverse barbs called filiform papillae. These are specialized taste bud cells that feel hard because of keratin, the substance that makes your fingernails hard. Surprisingly, only a small percentage of these papillae can actually sense taste. Because felines don’t rely on their sense of taste for making sure foods are edible, they were able to sacrifice taste for this particular adaptation.