If you had the opportunity to reinvent a departed, beloved pet, would you take it? Kris Stewart is taking her shot.
“To each their own, I don’t expect everyone to understand or agree and that’s perfectly fine,” said Stewart.
Stewart wants to clone Bear, her ragdoll cat that was hit by a car and killed in late January.
“A lady in an SUV was speeding through the neighbourhood and that was it,” said Stewart.
She is working with ViaGen Pets and Equine in Texas, U.S.
“We make the embryos and then we transfer them to a surrogate mom and she carries them for a normal gestation period,” said Codi Lamb, ViaGen Pets and Equine client services representative.
The procedure isn’t cheap. Stewart is prepared to pay $50,000 for another chance to hold Bear.
“This is what I want to do. This is what’s meaningful to me and I can’t think of actually a better way for me to spend any extra disposable income I have, it’s so meaningful to me,” said Stewart.
She says enough viable cells were harvested from Bear to create three embryos, which means there’s a chance Stewart could end up with three identical kittens.