http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcVZYabQEnY&feature=player_embedded#!
He's been on the BBC, CNN and YouTube -- and is now known as
"The World's Ugliest Cat" -- but deep down, Ugly Bat Boy is really
a sweetheart.
"We just had a snuggling episode now," Melissa LaRoche,
receptionist at Exeter Veterinary Hospital in Exeter, N.H., told
AOL News. "He gets quite loving and snuggly."
But he wasn't always that way.
Before becoming a permanent resident at the hospital, Ugly Bat
Boy terrorized the sleepy New England town. Once owned by a client
of the hospital, he had to be surrendered.
"Before he took up residence at the hospital, there'd be reports
from the public of seeing 'some sort of creature' on the loose,"
said Dr. Laurie Stewart, owner of Veterinary Dermatology of New
England. "He certainly earned his name."
But then, he came into the care of Dr. Stephen Bassett, who runs
Exeter Veterinary Hospital. And for the past nine years, he's been
the perfect pet.
"He's our little monster," said Bassett, who gave Ugly Bat Boy his
name.
"At first, we called him 'Yoda,' but he just looked so much like
the Bat Boy from the Weekly World News tabloid." These days, the
doctor said, they just call him "Ugs."
As for what exactly Ugs is, no one really knows. Bassett said he
believes a pairing in the town is producing cats with this
particular fur pattern.
"I spayed a female with skin and coat remarkably like this about
four years ago," he said. "And periodically I run into other cats
that look similar to Ugs."
"It's definitely a genetic mutation," Stewart, a veterinary
dermatologist, told AOL News.
"They did a cheek swap and DNA test on Ugs a few years ago," she
said. "None of the markers of a rex or a sphynx [two hairless
breeds] were present.
"Just as baldness is a genetic mutation in humans, I believe that
Ugly Bat Boy's skin and fur pattern is a result of years of
breeding from descendants with this genetic mutation."