What a great photo!

Our cat Sweetie Wildcat looked like this when our neighbors Chris and Leigh Ann rescued her from a parking lot in a thunderstorm. Sweetie has loved us unconditionally since she joined our family. (Here’s a link to her story: http://www.mykesweblog.com/2006/06/fast_food_kitte.html)

If you know who took this photo, please leave a comment so we can give well-deserved credit.

A two-faced “Janus” cat had entered the Guinness World Records at 12 years old, for being the longest living cat of his kind. Frank and Louie’s condition is a birth abnormality, and most cats born that way do not live long.The record holding cat is doing well and living in the area near Worcester MA with his pet-mom Marty, who has a background in veterinary medicine. Marty was working at Tufts Veterinary Medical School when she got Frank and Louis, who was brought in at one day old to be euthanized.

Frank and Louie the cat was born with two faces, two mouths, two noses, three eyes — and lots of doubts about his future.

Now, 12 years after Marty Stevens rescued him from being euthanized because of his condition, the exotic blue-eyed rag doll cat is not only thriving, but has also made it into the 2012 edition of Guinness World Records as the longest-surviving member of a group known as Janus cats, named for a Roman god with two faces.

“Every day is kind of a blessing; being 12 and normal life expectancy when they have this condition is one to four days,” Stevens said, stroking Frank and Louie’s soft fur as he sat on her lap purring. “So, he’s ahead of the game; every day I just thank God I still have him.”

Frank and Louie’s breeder had taken him to the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, where Stevens was working at the time, to be euthanized when he was just a day old. Stevens offered to take him home, but experts told her not to get her hopes up.
Janus cats almost never survive, and most have congenital defects, including a cleft palate that makes it difficult for them to nurse and often causes them to slowly starve or get milk in their lungs and die of pneumonia. The condition is the result of a genetic defect that triggers excessive production of a certain kind of protein.

But Frank and Louie did not suffer from most of the common Janus problems. Stevens used feeding tubes to nourish him for three months, hoping that would also save him from the danger of choking on food going down two mouths.

It turned out she didn’t have to worry about him choking, because Frank and Louie used just one of his mouths to eat.

“The condition itself is very rare, and I think that the fact that this cat became an adult, a healthy adult, is remarkable,” said Dr. Armelle deLaforcade, an associate professor at Cummings and head of the emergency services section.

Colleagues at the veterinary hospital told Stevens that trying to raise Frank and Louie might not be good for him — or her.

Still, she “stood firm and stood by the cat, and I’m really glad she did because this cat really has fewer problems than many cats that have very normal anatomies,” deLaforcade said.

Frank and Louie’s two faces have a complicated relationship. Both noses work, but one mouth does not have a lower jaw and isn’t connected to his one esophagus, so he can’t eat with it. Stevens discovered that only after the cat got an MRI later in life.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/30/house-cat-with-2-faces-lives-12-years-sets-record/#ixzz1hT0NQXIY

Oskar is completely blind (born without formed eyeballs) so his adopters gave him some balls with bells inside. As you can tell, he can “see” them by using his ears!

Music provided by SMITH’s CLOUD from Lincoln, Nebraska. The tracked is called A CHANGE OF DAYS.

via Chris Anderson

Kitten with Kiss rock band face

Fum is a lovely black cat and Gebra a kind barn owl.

Song: “Deixa’m dir una cosa” by Sopa de Cabra.

A video from the American Humane Society.

Ostensibly nothing has changed – Wednesday might just be bad dream, a crazy memory, or a lesson learned.  That’s how lucky we were.

I look at Siena, my dainty 11-month old calico, moving in her cat ways around the house with absolutely no difficulty, and THAT is what seems like a dream. I still have to make myself remember she is NOT a ghost, not just a memory moving through the space, but flesh and blood and consciousness, still utterly herself, still very much here, still very much alive.

While holding her, feeling the warmth of her body, the strength of her affection and the deep bond between pet and owner, I also feel how very thin the boundary is between what IS right now at this moment and what might have been, the short distance between one eventuality and another, between having her here in my arms, safe and miraculously healthy, and having her somewhere else, or maybe not anywhere at all any more.

***

I had come back from the market on Wednesday afternoon and the cats, Siena and Napoli, were restless.  It was a beautiful day so I let them out on the balcony to get some fresh air.  They eventually fell asleep in the shade and I went back inside briefly to get my computer and a few notebooks.  A minute or two later Napoli came in to find me.  I knew in that moment something was wrong; I could tell from his face, his body language.  I had the strange contradictory feeling of immediately sensing what had happened, while not believing it could be possible.

Siena, Napoli’s sister, was no longer asleep on the balcony.  After a thorough search it became clear she was no longer in the apartment at all.

The story is continued here: After the Fall – This Version of The Story

Moscow Cat Theatre