Sexual identity crisis...

Earlier this year, one of the vet techs told me that she could not figure out how to get a patient's rectal temperature. I was bewildered to hear this and went to see how one of my patients could be offering such a challenge to a very capable employee. Here's what I found...

For orientation, the tail is heading above this image, and the legs are below. This cat has only one opening on it's rear. Up at Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine, there is a hallway that contains hundreds of preserved mutated body parts demonstrating improper embryological development. I hated that hallway, and now I'm finding myself eager to leave the room. So I did, and madly scrambled for a veterinary reference that could explain what I was seeing. The best I could figure, I was faced with a very rare situation - persistent cloaca. Essentially the fecal and urinary orifices are one and the same. The owner is in love with this cat, so I suggested she prepare herself for a lifetime of recurrent urinary infections (imagine what would happen if a sewer were in your shorts). I also suggested that the cat appeared to be female so we would plan on performing a spay procedure in the months ahead, reserving extra time to address any funky findings when we open up the belly.

So a few months went by, and this cat re-appeared in the office for a follow-up examination. Before I walked in the room, I heard that the owner was laughing that I had mis-identified the sex of her cat. Here is what I found...


Here's a close-up...
Yes, indeed, those are some pretty large testicles - certainly something I did not expect.