I recently got my cat X-rayed due to a broken leg.
When looking at the X-ray images, I noticed that the cat seems to have more leg bones than I would have thought.
From the bottom/left, equating the bone segments to human bones:
I imagine that cats have roughly the same number & types of leg bones that humans have -- just shaped differently.
This makes me wonder, do cats walk on their tiptoes, and their foot bone is actually quite long (resembles a leg bone)?
Cats and dogs do walk on their toes, in what is called digitigrade stance. This is opposed to the plantigrade stance of humans.
This is shown nicely on this Wikipedia diagram, where the dog (or cat) is the middle picture, human to the left, and ungulate (hoofed animal) to the right:
The cat stands on their toe bones (phalanges). Note that this diagram is a bit of an oversimplification; cats have many more bones in their feet than shown in the diagram, but the general idea is correct. Cats actually have three phalanges that make up each digit.
As you noted, the metatarsal bones in the foot are comparatively long in the dog or cat, compared to the human.
In your cat's case, the bones that are broken are the tibia and fibula. The tibia is another name for the shinbone.
Apart from your cat's fracture, you can also see that the left hip joint appears dislocated.
Definitely advised to have a surgeon stabilize this fracture, and hopefully the hip joint can be (or has already been) replaced into normal position.
Not sure how many bones are past them, but those toe-beans look like they're exactly where I develop callouses on my hands. So they're kinda walking on their palms.
(Reddit)
Put your fingers flat on a table and lift your palm. And then imagine that you can still do things with your nails.
