A 15-week-old cat has perplexed the staff of a UK charity. Hope, the new tabby-and-white newcomer who was initially considered to be a female, has been discovered to lack sex organs
Cats Protection accepted the kitten into their care, and additional study revealed that Hope had neither external or internal sexual organs. While hormone imbalances have resulted in unusual outcomes in lions and hermaphrodite cats have been discovered on rare occasions, having no sexual parts at all is extremely unusual.
“We carried out a procedure to look for sex organs but there’s nothing apparent inside or out. There’s an outside possibility of some ectopic ovarian tissue hiding away internally but we think this is extremely unlikely,” said Fiona Brockbank, Cats Protection’s Senior Field Veterinary Officer, in a statement seen by IFLScience.
Hope has been regularly monitored by the team to ensure that she is growing properly and can urinate and defecate without incident. The staff is uncertain how this may effect Hope in the future because the instance is so uncommon.
“This is so rare that there isn’t really a commonly used term for this condition, but it is effectively ‘sexual organ agenesis’ – where agenesis is the lack or failure of development in relation to body organs.”
Agenesis has been seen in children and adults with different conditions, commonly those related to brain development, and is the complete or partial failure of an organ to develop during embryonic growth.
Despite this bizarre condition, little Hope has charmed the staff at both the Warrington Adoption Centre and the Tyneside branch where she was later moved to – so much so, that Hope has now been adopted by a member of the care team, and has also been given the new name, Beans.
