Frank and Louie was born on September 8, 1999, with a genetic condition so rare that it almost never gives second chances: diprosopus, or what scientists call a “Janus cat”, after the Roman god with two faces.
He had two noses, two mouths, and three eyes, but only one brain controlling that divided body. Leslie Lyons, a feline geneticist at the University of Missouri, explains that most of these animals die before reaching one day of life. One side of Frank and Louie’s face did not even have a lower jaw or its own esophagus, and that apparent flaw was precisely what allowed him to eat and breathe without fatal complications.
He lived 15 years and 87 days, until December 4, 2014, and Guinness World Records recognized him as the longest-lived Janus cat ever recorded. No one knows for certain why he managed to do it.
