Not that we often expect realism from our kids’ movies, but some seem grounded enough in reality that it’s easy to forget that the event that kicks its entire plot off is impossible.
One of these cases comes from 101 Dalmatians , a Disney movie with no flying elephants, fairy godmothers, or magic in general, but with a haul of pups that could never come out of one dog as quickly as they do.
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And yet, as we’ll see in the full video, that doesn’t mean that a family pet giving birth can’t lead to some surprises that most people would never have imagined.
For the past few weeks, the Waite family in London, Canada had been waiting for their cat, Nala, to give birth.
Finally, the big day came on Sunday and the family gathered around to help deliver the little kittens.
Nala would end up having eight cats in all, but the seventh one gave the family a big surprise.
As Jodi Waite told CTV News , “My daughter saw her and said, ‘Mom, this one has two heads’ … and I thought she assumed it was twins.”
But it turned out that while the kitten didn’t exactly have two heads, it did have two faces.
As the Waite family had never seen or even heard of this happening, they decided to name the little one Miracle.
They also said she could purr and meow at the same time with different mouths.
Miracle is known as a Janus cat, which describes a rare genetic mutation named after the similar two-faced Roman god Janus.
As veterinarian Matthew Kornya told CTV News, it’s so rare that only six such cats have been reported to exist.
Although the lack of cases makes it hard to tell what causes this condition, it may have to do with something called the “sonic hedgehog” protein.
And before anyone asks, Gizmodo reported that the name has nothing to do with the video game series.
As feline genetics specialist Leslie Lyons told National Geographic , this protein can influence how an animal’s face develops and when too much of it builds up, this second face can form.
Although Miracle’s mutation gave her an unusual look, this had no effect on how either the Waite family or Nala perceived her.
According to Jodi’s Facebook post , Nala treated Miracle the same as her other kittens. The only problem was that Miracle had difficulty latching on to Nala to eat, so the family would feed her with a syringe every two hours.
Indeed, most Janus cats have difficulty eating and breathing because they can also develop more than one esophagus and trachea.
According to National Geographic this wasn’t the case for Frank and Louie, which allowed them to become the longest living Janus cat after 15 years of life.
Sadly, it seems that this doubling up could very well have affected Miracle, as she died after only three days.
But in that time, she made a beautiful impression on the Waite family, who were able to share a short video of her walking before this happened.
h/t: CTV News
