Blood tests debunk Brazilian's cat-puppy claim

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Nov 22 (Reuters) Brazil's cat-puppy mystery has been solved.

Blood tests refute a Brazilian woman's claim that her cat had given birth to three puppies, geneticist Adil Pacheco said yesterday.

Cassia Aparecida de Souza, 18, from a poor neighborhood of Passo Fundo in southern Brazil, said last Friday that her cat Mimi had given birth to the three puppies as well as three kittens, which did not survive.

''People who aren't experts often imagine things,'' said Pacheco, director of the Institute of Biological Sciences of the University of Passo Fundo. ''All the facts contradict her.'' Pacheco, who was asked by a local newspaper to conduct a chromosome test to check the spectacular claim which gained wide media attention, said mammals sometimes nursed the young from another species.

REUTERS LL DS1540