It’s in the news today, that Rebecca Smith a British woman, won a competition to have her pet cloned and she now has Minnie Winnie a clone of her 12 year old dachshund Winnie.
This set me thinking about the cloning of animals and doing a PoC search I found this article Michael wrote a while back, it must have slipped under the radar as it has no comments.
I must have missed it at the time as it’s a very well written article and I’ve found it very interesting. Would you clone your cat? I wouldn’t, for many reasons, the main one being that we have no right to interfere with Nature this way, it’s going too far!
Imagine cloning the very first cat we had in our lives, what about when the clone grew old, would we/could we clone the clone? Each and every cat we have/have had in our home has been/is special and unique and much loved.
I don’t see how a cloned cat can grow to be exactly the same as the cat he/she is cloned from, because they will grow up under different circumstances.
My first extra special soulmate cat was Bert, I was in my twenties, he died when I was in my forties and a very different person to who I was when he came along and different again to who I am in my sixties, because with age we get experience and learn from our mistakes.
If we had cloned our first cat that would have been an already living breathing cat denied a home. For every cat cloned that’s one less home for another cat needing a home.
If cloning became popular and affordable there would be even less homes, more cats than ever would die unwanted.
I imagine cloning has been modified since Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal, aged very quickly. I shudder to think of the experiments going on in laboratories and the number of cloned animals born in the process, only to die or to be killed as imperfect.
Only rich people will be able to afford to have a pet cloned right now, just as only well off people can afford to buy pedigree pets. Will having a cloned pet become the fashion for so called ‘celebrities’ and a status symbol of their wealth?
Thousands of animals are being killed in Shelters for lack of homes, all breeding of new breeds and cloning of animals should be stopped until that situation is resolved. But that will never happen because in this sad world the human race are never content, they want more, more, more and the animal kingdom are the ones suffering.
As much as I loved all the cats we have had and as much as I love Walter and Jozef I know and accept that one day we will lose them. Life and death of humans and animals are the natural order of this world to keep the numbers balanced.
I’d love Walt and Jo to be here with us forever, but they are irreplaceable, a Walter clone wouldn’t ‘be’ Walter, a Jozef clone wouldn’t ‘be’ Jozef. Each and every cat to me is unique and I think we have no right to clone any animal, they can’t consent to it.
I wouldn’t want another me in this world and like humans, cats are to me individuals, each the one and only, born as Nature intended.
There is a lot to comment on in your comment. One thing that comes to my mind is memories. You refer to the beautiful memories that you have and these will become everything one day when you lose him. And they will be beautiful memories which you will hold in your head for the rest of your life.
I would think that cloning a cat would destroy or damage those memories. The cloned cat would interfere with the memories because in front of you you have a cloned version of your former cat who would be a bit different. This is another aspect as far as I am concerned about cat cloning that makes it disagreeable.
Perhaps the point that I am making is that cloning is unnatural and there are unforeseen consequences which are detrimental. It has not been thought through properly, while at the same time commercialism has been introduced into it.
Personally I wouldn’t do it, but I’ve done a lot of research on genetic memories. If what science is saying is true, the memories of our ancestors are carried in our DNA. This would mean the cloned animal would have the memories of the animal it was cloned from. I’m not sure how easy it would be for the cloned pet to tap into those memories. I believe even if this were the case it would lead to disappointment because you can’t recreate a memory just by wishing it were so. We’ve proven that with humans. Every moment is special, whether it’s with an animal or a human. I did trace much of my family tree using the basis of genetic memory. Strangest experience of my life.
There is one day in the future that I am dreading more than any other day and that is the day that I have to say Goodbye to my Mikey…until I see him again.
As romantic as people want to make cloning out to be, when you really think about it, your heart just tells you that it’s wrong and pointless.
The incredible relationship that Mikey and I share is built on knowing one another, it’s built on years and years of every days.
It’s the day I discovered he was deaf and all the nights I spent crying into his fur after my sons death.
Its playing hide and seek (his favorite game) and running from him because he actually chases me.
It’s the day that I discovered I would have to store his food in a container because cat food bags are no match for my kitty. I found this out the hard way.
It’s watching him climb that tree for the first time.
It’s the day that we put ramps around my bedroom for him and a platform above my bed for him to lounge on and seeing him jump off that thing on to my bed.
It’s the time he slipped out at 1am and I was outside with a huge flood light searching the woods, crying my eyes out until I saw him next to the canal drinking water. finding him that night was the happiest night of my life..
It’s the way that he says ‘Mama’ and how his little face just gets the cutest expression when he says it.
It’s me trying to sneak out of the house to water the garden while he is asleep because wherever Mommy goes, Mikey goes and if he doesn’t get to go he sits in the window with the sad little Monkey face that I just cannot handle at all …so I sneak.
And it’s built on so many more days than this….the memories, so many memories.
You can clone a body but all of those days that have built this most amazing friendship will not be there because they belong to Mikey and to me and there is just no way to replicate that
As I was reading the comments I was thinking about posting a comment about the soul of a cloned animal, and then I got to the bottom and saw these posts on the very subject. It’s a bit like a horror film when a lookalike comes along but with dead eyes, so – does a cloned animal have a soul, is it in fact an animal or is it just a replica? Like Michael I find something a bit sinister in it, it makes me shiver a bit at the thought of it.
It seems we all agree on this and Jennifer is right, we can not clone a soul.
Nice one. And a subtle comment – and very true. I think your comment highlights the weakness of cloning which is really about hard science and living creatures are not just about hard science-they are very far from that.