Courtesy of Victor Fisher/Polaris
Genetic Savings and Clone's cat manager, Leslie Ungerer and CEO Lou Hawthorne present "Little Nicky" to a Dallas, Texas, resident who paid $50,000 for the kitten.
When San Francisco-based Genetic Savings and Clone announced in December it had sold a cloned kitten to a Texas woman, the public seemed caught between feelings of revulsion and excitement over the idea of cloning the family pet. The Maine Coon cat's genetic replica, dubbed Little Nicky, was not the first cat ever cloned; the company had already cloned four. However, it was the first to be sold commercially, and it will hardly be the last.
Now that cat cloning is a possibility, at least half a dozen companies say they are planning commercial cloning operations. In addition, some companies are focusing on cloning technology rather than producing clones themselves, such as Westport, Conn.-based Aurox. Others, such as Bryan, Texas-based ...