When Martha Stevens saved Frank and Louie from being euthanized, she was told that he wouldn’t survive the week. That’s right, “he”.
Frank and Louie are actually just one cat and the reason to expect his quick demise is because he suffered from diprosopus. Diprosopus is a condition that duplicates features on the face. In this case, Frank and Louie had 3 eyes and two mouths.
Luckily, Frank and Louie survived the first week and then fifteen years of a long happy life before finally succumbing to cancer on December 4 of this year.
Frank and Louie was (…were?) born in 1999 as a Janus cat, a term coined from the Roman god ‘Janus’ who had multiple faces.
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For the first two months of his life, his owner Martha had to feed him through a tube. Eventually the ‘Frank’ side of him learned to eat for himself and Frank and Louie ended up living a fairly normal life.
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He had two eyes on the side that work, and one center eye that is blind. Martha says that he vision was probably similar to that of a horse.
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Frank and Louie also had two mouths and noses despite only having one brain.
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The ‘Louie’ side didn’t have a bottom jaw, so at one point, the teeth there had to be removed.
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In 2012, the Guinness Book of World Records declared Frank and Louie the oldest Janus cat in the world.
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It’s remarkable that a cat with Frank and Louie’s condition even became a functioning adult cat, let alone survived for over 15 years.
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Frank and Louie, and Martha.
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Check out an adorable video of Frank and Louie in action from back in 2011.
Via: io9
When asked if she was going to adopt another Janus cat, Martha Stevens said that even though she knows how rare they are, “I would love to do it again.”
RIP Frank and Louie.
