Photo: Chris Stewart
Bring the cloned Canadian kitten.
A Kelowna woman who has been waiting more than a year for her cloned cat to be reborn will have to wait a little longer.
“These things take time. It’s not a perfect science, damn well. But it’s not a perfect science,” said Chris Stewart after the first attempt to clone his cat Bear.
The cloned cat was implanted into its surrogate mother back in late fall and was due to be born in mid-January. However, the first attempt failed.
“The kittens were born but had two different cell lines in the kitten’s mother. The other cell line has produced kittens,” Stewart said, explaining that she will have to wait a little longer for her beloved cat, Bear.
ViaGen uses frozen cat cells in the cloning process, taking one of the cells and replacing the nucleus with a female cat egg.
“After treatment through our patented process, the egg and cell will join and the embryo will begin to grow. The embryo will soon be transferred to a surrogate mother. After a normal gestation period, your cat’s genetic twin will be born,” the ViaGen website states.
Now the process will have to start all over again, but Stewart says she doesn’t feel disheartened and is trying to stay patient.
“These things just take time and sometimes it takes a few tries. You know we kind of work for Mother Nature, right? So you have to be prepared for things not to be 100% as they would normally be,” she said.
The cloning process isn’t cheap, costing about $35,000, but Stewart says she’s made her initial deposit and won’t make a final payment until she gets her kitten or kittens.
Despite the setback, Stewart is not losing hope for the cloning process: “I miss a furry animal next to me, but no, I’m doing well. I’m willing to bide my time and, you know, I trust that the process is there. It works. It may take a few tries [I] you just have to be patient. It’s going to happen,” Stewart says.
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