When a cat is in free fall, that is weightlessness. At least initially, until air resistance starts limiting the velocity.
In zero-g, you do not directly sense in which way gravity is pointing.
Probably, under the conventional free fall situation, the cat is relying on visual clues, and the sensation of air moving through its fur, to establish which way it is falling, as the basis for the righting reflex: which way to aim the paws. Those clues are absent in the simulated zero-g environment, which feels like free fall, but the cat doesn't see any relative movement to anything, or feel any air movement.
That should be pretty easy to test. Anyone know if blind cats land on their feet? If blind cats are in general too geriatric to test on, what about a blind fold, and dropping your cat upside-down on a bed?
Could you accomplish the same thing in a ground based lab with a fan blowing air up at ~80 degrees? If airflow is used for orientation, then the test subject should orient to be parallel to the direction of airflow as it is falling.
All for Science, of course.
(The 80 degrees thing is there so they don’t hurt themselves when they reach the ground - hopefully being only 10 degrees off vertical will be recoverable).
In zero-g, you do not directly sense in which way gravity is pointing.
Probably, under the conventional free fall situation, the cat is relying on visual clues, and the sensation of air moving through its fur, to establish which way it is falling, as the basis for the righting reflex: which way to aim the paws. Those clues are absent in the simulated zero-g environment, which feels like free fall, but the cat doesn't see any relative movement to anything, or feel any air movement.