Nine years ago, Newly weaned British Longhair kittens boarded a private plane in Virginia and flew to their new home in Europe. These cats were unlike any other, except that they were created in a lab. They were clones: genetically identical to their predecessor, now sadly deceased.
It had taken 7 months and cost $50,000, but the cat was one of the first commercially produced pets in the United States. Since then, several thousand dogs, cats, and horses have followed, and each year the waiting list grows longer. Yes, of course. Haven’t you ever wished your pet could live, if not forever, at least as long as you? Now it’s possible, sort of.
WIRED spoke with a longtime customer service manager at a large pet trading company. She guides pet owners through the entire process, from when they send off the old pet to when they meet—remember?—the new one.
Part of us clients come to us after the death of their pet. They mourn. They’re trying to find a way to cope, so they Google “What do you do when your pet passes away?” That’s when they come to us, and I’m usually the first person they talk to. There are many emotions. I am happy to hold their hand in this process, because when a pet dies, especially if it is sudden, many people do not think clearly. Postmortem, things should be done as soon as possible.
After the pet has passed, the cells can live for about five days. The body should be refrigerated, but not frozen, because ice damages the cells. We can often claim a piece of ear from a dead pet. The ear tissue is strong; it works very well. People don’t want to think about their pet missing part of their ear, so that’s sometimes a struggle.
Once the sample is in the lab, the first step is to grow cells in culture from the tissue, then freeze and store those cells. When everyone is ready to move forward with cloning, we transfer some of those cells to our cloning lab in upstate New York.
Cloning begins by making embryos from cells. We take a donor egg, remove the nucleus, and insert another one of the millions of cells we have grown. There is an electrical stimulation that tricks the egg into thinking it has been fertilized, but there is no sperm. That’s the magic of cloning. It takes a lot of skill and good hand-eye coordination.
The lab will create several embryos, then transfer those embryos to one of the foster dogs or cats, specially bred to be great mothers. With a few attempts, we will have a puppy or a kitten. Sometimes more than one puppy or kitten, because when we transfer embryos to a surrogate, it’s like IVF—more than a person can take. If two or three puppies were born, the client would get them all. On rare occasions we have a client who only wants one, so we help place more. Many times it goes to the employee here. Almost all of our employees have a pet.