A Chinese firm has successfully cloned a pet cat, Agence France-Presse reports.
Sinogene, a Beijing-based company, has cloned more than 40 pet dogs, but the British shorthaired cat Garlic was its first successfully cloned cat, it adds. "When Garlic died, I was very sad," owner Huang Yu tells AFP. "I couldn't face the facts because it was a sudden death. I blame myself for not taking him to the hospital in time, which led to his death."
He adds that the new cloned cat looks just like Garlic and that he's waiting to see whether their personalities are similar. The cost of the procedure is 380,000 yuan (US $53,000) for dogs and 250,000 yuan (US $35,000) for cats, according to AFP.
Singer Barbra Streisand revealed last year in Variety that two of her three dogs are clones of her previous dog, Samantha, that died in 2017.
Sinogene isn't the only firm offering pet cloning. South Korea-based Sooam Biotech Research Foundation has cloned some 800 pets at a cost of about $100,000 each, AFP says, and NPR noted last year that in addition to Sooam, US-based ViaGen, was charging $50,000 to clone a dog and $25,000 for a cat.