Buttered Cat Paradox

The buttered cat paradox is a paradox based on the tongue-in-cheek combination of two adages:

Buttered cat

1. Cats always land on their feet.
2. Buttered toast always lands buttered side down.

The paradox arises when one considers what would happen if one attached a piece of buttered toast – with the butter side up – to the back of a cat, then dropped the cat from a large height.

Some people jokingly maintain that the experiment will produce an anti-gravity effect.

They propose that as the cat falls towards the ground, it will slow down and start to rotate, eventually reaching a steady state of hovering a short distance from the ground.

Meanwhile, the cat remains in the air rotating at a high speed as both the buttered side of the toast and the cat’s feet attempt to land on the ground.

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