Life of static variables within the VM

Hello All,

 

I have a question regarding the life of static variables within the VM.
I always thought that if you instantiated an object that contained
static variables, garbage collection would cleanup the object along with
the static variables.  For instance, say I have classes Pet and Cat.
Cat contains several static variables (say names of cats) and I
instantiate an instance of Cat from Pet.  Do the static variables within
Cat ever get GC'd.  This is something I obviously missed a long time ago
and feel a little sheepish for not knowing.

 

Thanks,

Chad