Can you spot it?
An employee at an auto repair shop was having an average day at work when she discovered a taped-up box left by the shop’s back gate. Inside the box, she found four kittens. Thinking quickly, she reached out to True Rescue, an animal shelter based in Tennessee, who took them in right away.
The workers and volunteers at True Rescue deal with this kind of story on a daily basis. But when Kristin Condit, director of operations at True Rescue, started the intake process for these kittens, she realized this wasn’t going to be an average day after all. When she was getting ready to inspect one of the kittens, another shelter worker named Ross noticed something unusual about him.
“As I pulled him out of the carrier, Ross said, ‘What is that on his ear?’” Condit told The Dodo.
True Rescue
They quickly realized that the kitten had an uncommon (and adorable) genetic mutation: an extra set of ears. These two small ears were nestled inside his “regular” ears and facing backwards, kind of like a “clamshell,” Condit said.
“We [noticed] pretty quickly that he does have movement of all four ears,” Condit said.
The shelter workers had never seen anything like it.
“[His mutation] is congenital, and it’s very rare, because it has to come from both sides of the parents … We haven’t found any reports of cats or kittens with rear-facing extra ears,” Amy Simcik, executive director of True Rescue, told The Dodo.
Here’s a closeup of Audio’s ears:
True Rescue
Everyone at the shelter debated about what would be the perfect name for a kitten with such a special abnormality. They finally settled on naming him Audio, since they like to joke he has surround sound hearing.
At first, Condit and Simcik thought Audio was the only one of his litter with extra ears. But it turns out that two of Audio’s siblings have little ear mutations as well — his tortoiseshell sister has a tiny extra ear on her right side, while his calico sister has a tiny one on her left side.
True Rescue
To ensure that Audio’s extra ears weren’t harming him in any way, True Rescue took him to the vet. The vet not only confirmed that Audio was perfectly healthy, but he was also so excited to get to work with such a remarkable patient.
“You’ve never seen a grown man geek out as hard as our vet did the minute I brought him in,” Condit said. “He just thought it was the coolest thing he’d ever seen.”
After everything Audio has been through, he needed a happy ending. And Simcik gave him just that.
True Rescue
“I decided to keep Audio myself,” she said. “He’s going to be an ambassador for feral cats.”
Even though Audio’s found his forever home with Simcik, anyone who crossed paths with him isn’t likely to forget him soon.
“He’s pretty unique,” Simcik said.
To support other animals like Audio, you can make a donation to True Rescue here.
