One-Eyed Cat Was Real Thing--And Still In Demand Weeks After Death

By: Joe Strupp Cyclops, the one-eyed kitten from Oregon whose widely-distributed photo sparked much skepticism and debate on the Web, has been judged real by a local veterinarian.

And "Cy" remains in demand several weeks after death, the owner says.

Traci Allen, 35, has been contacted in recent weeks by Ripley's Believe It Or Not, as well as curators of "Lost World," a museum "of oddities" slated to open this year near Syracuse, N.Y. Both wanted to display the deceased cat, which Allen has kept in her freezer.

In addition, she said a Harvard University professor has asked for a sample of the feline's DNA to study.

"We have to preserve him somehow," Allen told E&P. "He may make a good science project or for research."

A photographer from the Associated Press--which initially took some flack for running her photo without seeing the cat in person--came to her house in Redmond, Ore. and took the deceased animal to a veterinarian for inspection, she said. The vet declared the animal a real cat.

"He took a bunch of pictures and asked if it was okay to take [the cat] to the vet and they verified it was real," Allen told E&P, referring to photographer Rick Bowmer. "I thought AP would do a follow, but they never did."

Bryan Brumley, AP's Portland, Ore. bureau chief, confirmed that Bowmer made the visit last month. Brumley also said the vet provided AP with a letter stating her findings, which the news service released to E&P.

"We wanted to check and make sure the cat was bona fide and taking it to the vet was the way to make sure," Brumley said, adding that no follow-up story was done because it was not considered newsworthy.

The letter, from Karen Laidley, DVM, declared that "the body had not been tampered with and was in its natural newborn state." She also went on to describe the cat's uncommon affliction, "Cyclopia," noting that it affected other elements of the brain and tissue that led to the animal's eventual death.

The single-vision feline, nicknamed Cy, came into the world on Dec. 28, according to Allen, whose photo of the newborn popped up on Web sites worldwide after AP distributed it last month. Although the cat only lived for about a day, according to Allen, its existence prompted accusations of photo manipulation from bloggers and other Internet opinion-makers, and forced AP to defend its use of the photo for several days after making it available Jan. 6.

Just a week after placing the photo on its wires, AP officials ran a story explaining how editors had reviewed a memory stick from Allen's digital camera and determined it to be authentic. But that did not stop naysayers, some of whom continued to accuse AP and Allen of either manipulating the photo or failing to provide proper proof.

On Jan. 12, Tom Stathis, the AP regional photo editor who sent out the photo from his Southern California office, told E&P that he did not send anyone to view the cat in person because Allen's home was at least a four-hour drive from the AP Portland bureau.

But Bowmer eventually made the trek on Jan. 13 from the Portland office to Allen's home and took the cat's body to the vet. A reporter and photographer from The Bulletin of nearby Bend. Ore. also went along and later wrote a story about the cat, according to City Editor Heidi Hagemeier. The Bulletin had previously declined to run the AP photo because editors had questioned its authenticity.

"I was glad that they came out," Allen said about the journalists who made the veterinarian visit. She added that she had not decided what to do with the cat, but continues to get requests for interviews, mostly from radio stations. When a TV reporter from Portland called for an on-air interview, Allen said she declined. "She was pretty aggressive on the phone so I did not want to see her in person," Allen recalls, declining to identify the reporter. "I can imagine how she would be."