Cloned cat brings real comfort to its owner

A Chinese biotech company produced the country's first cloned cat last month, offering a solution for cat lovers heartbroken by the death of a beloved pet.

The cloned British Shorthair cat, named Dasuan－Garlic in English－was born on July 21, 66 days after a successful embryo transfer in a laboratory of Beijing based-Sinogene, the biotech company.

"My cat (also called Dasuan) died of illness in January. If it weren't for my carelessness in missing the best time for his treatment, he would be 3 years old now," said Huang Yu, Dasuan's owner.

Sinogene created the world's first cloned dog using the somatic cell transfer technique in 2017.

"We began cat cloning research and experiments in August last year," said Zhao Jianping, vice-president of Sinogene. "Although the surrogate mother, a 2-year-old domestic cat, is not the same breed as Dasuan, she is showing great maternal instincts and taking good care of the cloned offspring."

The dead cat that supplied the cells for cloning and the cloned kitten look identical and have a great chance of having similar behavior, Zhao said.

"The cloned kitten is 90 percent like my original cat," Huang said.

Dasuan had been dead for nearly six hours when Huang recalled the news about the cloned dog and contacted Sinogene. Staff members told him to make a quick decision because it would be better to extract the cells within 24 hours.