"I went to go do laundry, I'd seen my cat was like meowing and then all of the sudden babies started coming out and I started hollering for my husband," said cat owner Ariel Contreras. "This is the second one. And so whenever he came out, my husband said, 'honey, he has two heads,' and I went 'no way!"
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Contreras named the kitten Harvey after the fictional villain from the Batman series, a fitting name for a cat born with two faces.
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Harvey is known as Janus cat, which is a rare genetic mutation caused by excess protein production while in the womb.
"It has one of everything except for the skull," said Dr. Tim Addis of Alley Cat Animal Rescue in Arkansas.
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Janus cats are extremely rare, with only a handful of known cases in the modern era. Typically, the cats have a lower survival rate than normal kittens, but Addis said that Harvey, who was born Wednesday, is showing all the signs of a healthy newborn kitten.
"There was one that made it 12 years, and then one that made it 15 years," Contreras said. "I'm really praying this one makes it that long, and we will do whatever it takes."
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