Two-Faced Cat Sets Guinness World Record: Report
A remarkable cat named “Frank and Louie” is winning world records, after he turned 12 on September 8, making him the longest living "Janus" cat, with a rare genetic disease that gives him two-faces.
“He’s just so affectionate and sweet he usually wins people over,” owner Marty Stevens told the Worcester Telegram.
Twelve years earlier, the cat’s breeder had taken the it to be euthanized at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, where Stevens worked at the time, according to the Associated Press. The cat was one day old when she offered to take it in.
The condition "Janus" gets its name from the name of a two-faced Roman god.
Janus cats have a defect which excessively produces a certain protein – which goes by the quirky name ‘sonic hedgehog homolog’ that causes craniofacial duplication or disprosopia.
Frank and Louie has two mouths, two noses and three eyes. It eats out of the its left side.
Cats in such a condition do no generally survive. The disease causes other disorders around the cat’s body, usually resulting in lifespan of one to four days.