Claim: Photograph shows a half-black, half-tabby "chimera cat."
Example: [Collected via e-mail, August 2012]
I was browsing through Facebook and found a picture of this chimera cat. The cat appeared to be a mix of solid black and tabby - complete with heterochromia (one blue eye and one green eye). But it looked like photoshop to me.
Is the chimera cat a real animal? It's beautiful but seems to be too good
to be true.
Origins: The cat shown in the image displayed above is named Venus, and she was adopted from a North Carolina dairy farm in 2009. Her distinctive appearance comes from a face that is neatly divided vertically into two very different halves: one side having solid black fur with a yellow eye, and the other having orange tabby markings with a blue eye.
Venus has her own Facebook page ("The Amazing Chimera Cat") on which her owner provides Venus' back story:
Ok so here's her story. Almost 3 years ago in September 2009 one of my childhood friends posted some pics of a bunch of stray kittens her husband took pics of while he was doing some work on a dairy farm in North Carolina. Naturally being an animal lover I looked through the pics and saw this little split face cat that looked like a combo of the
More of Venus can be seen in the following videos:
Most likely Venus' unusual physical appearance is due to ordinary genetic variation and not true chimerism.
Last updated: 8 July 2014