Thursday, October 12, 2006

A Little Strange Pussy

I was amused by a story about a cat cloning company that has gone out of business. Genetics Savings & Clone (I'm not making that name up), a San Francisco biotech company that sold cloned pets, sent letters to its customers last month informing them it will close at the end of the year because of little demand for cloned cats.

Apparently, $50,000 for an identical clone was too expensive when you can get a "pretty close one" at the pound for free. That and you still had to teach Mr. Scruggins II his name, he needed potty trained again and, even though Mr. Scruggins I was neutered, it seems that stuff grows back during the cloning process.

And isn't that a puzzling little bit of pet ethics? Why would anyone pay to have their pet spayed or neutered and then pay again to have it reproduced? This one must keep Bob Barker awake at night.

As a purchaser of the cloned cats I think I would want to look behind the counter to see if there wasn't just a box of kittens that they were charging $50,000 each for.

And how did the process work, anyway? Did they give the cat in question a kitty porn magazine and a plastic cup and send him off to a private room? Or was it the pet owner's responsibility to whack off the cat manually? And how would the clone turn out if some of the owner's spit got mixed in with the sperm sample? I'm just wondering, is all.

Besides, if you had an extra $50,000 laying around the house and you were thinking about cloning the cat -- wouldn't that money be better spent on a shrink?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,219957,00.html

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