Cyclops Kitty

I'm sure you've seen this already, but here it goes.

Cy the cyclopic kitten was born in the last few days of 2005 and sadly enough died in the last few days of 2005. When this first came out there was, quite reasonably, a lot of doubts about this picture. I mean, come on! In this day of Photo Shop, who wouldn't think that a possibility? Live Science and the AP regional photo editor Tom Stathis has confirmed that this in indeed a true incident.

So truth remains stranger than fiction and now we have Cy.

This kind of thing happens so much that science has a name for it: Holoprosencephaly. This condition is a birth defect in which the brain doesn't properly develop. There are different levels of severity and obviously the above case is a severe one. There have been reports of people with this condition being born with a nose on the forehead, one eye, single-nostril noses, one middle tooth instead of two front teeth, and others.

Traci Allen, the owner of Cy, spent the night and the next day feeding and caring for it, but the deformities were just too much for the kitten to survive.

So what do you do with a dead one-eyed cat? Well, her owner put it in the freezer to save for science. Imagine that nightmare ice cream run in the middle of the night.

Since this condition does exist, might it have some relation to the belief of cyclops in the past? There are better possibilities, such as mammoth skulls (seen to the right) that fit both giant and one-eyed beings, but it might have something to do with it.

If you want to read more about Cy, try: http://www.livescience.com/animals/060111_ap_cyclops_cat.html

Don't be fooled, though. While Cy is real, this Internet pic is not: