SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil's cat-puppy mystery has been solved.

Brazilian student Cassia Aparecida de Souza (L) and her friend Gabriela Santos pat puppies that her owners claimed were her own offspring born out of mating with a neighbor's dog, in the southern Brazilian city of Passo Fundo, Rio Grande del Sur state, November 21, 2006. [Reuters]

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

Cassia Aparecida de Souza, 18, from a poor neighbourhood 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.