UGLY CLONE WAR OVER COPY CAT!
Animal group slams gal for recreating beloved pet
HEARTBROKEN Kelly Anderson’s decision to clone her beloved dead kitty Chai for a whopping $25,000 became a cat-tastrophe when she was attacked by animal rights activists and the recycled feline grew into a totally changed pussy.
The purr-fectly bizarre drama began when Chai suddenly kicked the bucket at age five on March 16, 2017, leaving Kelly devastated.
“I couldn’t sleep that night,” she says. “I just remembered having a conversation with my roommate, who’s a vet tech, at some point that night about cloning.”
The grieving gal “started doing a lot of research” and found ViaGen, a Texas company that charges $25,000 per clone.
Four years after giving the company a piece of Chai’s skin from a biopsy, Kelly got a new kitten named Belle, her dead pal’s genetic double. Belle looks like Chai but is “completely different” from her late twin.
“Belle is a totally new cat,” Kelly says. “She is the troublemaker and she wants to play all the time. She’s really rambunctious, very affectionate, inquisitive and just bold. She has no fear at all … she loves going out to new places, loves exploring and meeting other animals.”
But animal trainer Kelly, who works in Austin, has been hit by a backlash.
The PETA animal group accuses her of encouraging a “cloning trend” that “directly and adversely affects the lives of other cats who are sitting in shelters waiting for a family.”
She’s also getting “dozens of hate messages every day” on social media from people who “have ethical problems” and others who “claim I’m using a cloned cat to make money.”
But she insists, “I’m making nothing off this. I just loved Chai so much. That’s the only reason I cloned him.”
And as for the cloned kitty, well, Belle’s the cat’s meow!