Theoretically, once you're high enough that you reach terminal velocity, any additional altitude does not increase your speed but does increase your time in the air, potentially giving you more time to navigate towards a more favorable landing site (evergreen grove, mountainside covered in deep snow, pile of 45 mattresses that happens to be outside, etc).
Not that I know of. Maybe, if you jump from high enough that you pass out due to lack of oxygen, and you land in a manner that benefits from you being a ragdoll vs an actively bracing person, then it could help, but that seems unlikely(you'd probably also wake back up before you hit the ground, as I've heard stories about this happening to WWII pilots).
But overall, I believe it is better to be conscious. If you are falling from 3 miles up, you can glide to maybe 1 mile in any direction. This gives you the chance to try to land in a snow drift, in some mud, maybe a hay bail, or even a thick shrubbery, etc.
First you must find... another shrubbery! Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here, beside this shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get a two layer effect with a little path running down the middle. ("A path! A path!") Then, you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forrest... with... a herring!
This is almost certainly survivorship bias[1]. Only middle-height cats that might theoretically survive are going to be taken to a veterinarian; the cats that fell from higher heights were not included, because they were "obviously dead". Which makes "high-rise syndrome" an example of the exact type of bias discussed in this paper.
> Strangely, cats that fall from a height under 6 stories have more severe trauma than those that fall from over 6 stories.
So, the theory is, if a cat falls from a height above 6 stories they either have less severe injuries or are just dead so the owner just doesn't bring them to the vet?
>>6 stories they either have less severe injuries or are just dead so the owner just doesn't bring them to the vet
I would guess that at that height something must've broken the fall such that the cat suffered almost no injuries. I really don't see how the cat would survive the fall otherwise.
Cats are much smaller than humans and better prepared to absorb impact after "floating" to ground. I assume breaking the fall would actually be dangerous to cats because it disturbs their approach.