Frank and Louie is a cat who was born with two faces, so he has two names. Does that mean he has 18 lives?
It almost seems so now that he has earned a spot as the longest lived Janus cat in the new edition of the Guinness World Records (Guinness has dropped the word “book” from the name in this digital age). The cat's owner is a Worcester woman named Marty Stevens who has owned Frank and Louie since a local breeder brought him into Tufts Veterinary Clinic to be euthanized when he was a day old. Marty was a veterinary nurse at Tufts at the time and offered to take him home.
The prognosis, however, was not good. Janus cats, named after the Roman god with two faces, are extremely rare and seldom live more than a few days after being born. Often they die within hours. But under Marty's dedicated care Frank and Louie flourished. He turned 12 years old on Sept. 8.
Frank and Louie has two mouths, two noses and two normal eyes with one larger non-functioning eye in the center. “That was the first eye to open up when he was two days old so I had a little Cyclops for a while,” Marty said. That's not an endearing image, and, as often happens with animals and even people who are not exactly like everyone else, Frank and Louie often draws a shocked reaction from onlookers. But that first impression quickly fades.
“He's just so affectionate and sweet he usually wins people over,” Marty said.
The cat has two faces, but only one head and brain, so the faces react in unison and not as separate entities. Also, two faces doesn't mean two cans of cat food every morning. The cat's right side — or Frank's side — is connected to an esophagus while Louie's isn't, so Frank eats for two.
If you look at the cat from the left he looks completely normal. Look at him from the right and he does as well. It is only when you look straight at him that you can see how unusual he is — so different he attracted worldwide attention after a local news story and video about him was picked up internationally about six years ago. One of those articles captured the attention of British cryptozoologist and science writer Karl Shuker, whose books include “From Flying Toads to Snakes with Wings: In Search of Mysterious Beasts, Bizarre Creatures and Mystery Animals” and “Mystery Cats of the World.”
Mr. Shuker also happens to be the life sciences consultant for Guinness and it was he who submitted details of Frank and Louie for inclusion in the 2012 edition as the world's longest surviving Janus cat. It is a term, he said in an email to the Telegram, that he coined several years previously in relation to cats born with diprosopia, or two faces on a single head. Though rare, it is a phenomenon that occurs in many species, Mr. Shuker says, including humans. Mr. Shuker said he was thrilled to learn the cat was still alive when Marty tracked him down by email after finding his blog. She wanted to tell him that the cat had been included in the 2012 Guinness edition.
She was surprised to learn it was he who submitted the cat's information.
The Guinness entry on Frank and Louie says the cat lives in Millbury, Ohio, and had reached the age of six by 2006, the last year for which Mr. Shuker could find press accounts. The cat and Marty actually lived in Millbury before moving to Worcester.
Even in 2006, Frank and Louie was the world's longest living Janus cat.
As a newborn kitten the size of a hamster, he wasn't expected to live 12 days let alone 12 years. Because he had to be fed every two hours, Marty carried him in a shoebox everywhere she went, including work, feeding him with a special veterinary kitten formula. She had to put a tube down into his stomach and injected the formula with a syringe. Veterinarians advised her not to get her hopes up.
“But every day he got stronger,” Marty said. “He just kept beating the odds.”
There wasn't a special celebration Sept. 8 because cats, after all, aren't exactly party animals. “I just kept calling him ‘birthday boy' all day,” Marty said.
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