"Worth it": Insane amount woman spends to clone dead cat
Kelly Anderson from Texas, US was devastated when she lost her "soulmate" cat Chai more than four years ago.
Not long after, in what she calls "fate", Anderson decided to clone her beloved pet, a process which cost her a whopping $USD25,000 ($AUD38,000).
"It was just one of those moments where I had been talking about cloning a few weeks before and fate kicked in," she told Weekend Today.
"I remembered the conversation and decided to clone."
The process took about four years, which is roughly twice the average time it takes to clone a pet.
"It was not money that I had come easily to me but it was a very important process for me to do," she said.
"It was 100 per cent worth it. The process saved my life."
Anderson added that Belle, the successfully cloned cat, has grown to be as "bold, bossy, sassy" as Chai, and their personalities have become more alike.
Despite the similarities, Anderson said that she doesn't set any expectations on Belle to be Chai's replacement.
"I would still say she's very much her own cat and I treat her that way. I always try to treat them as individuals.
"I never wanted to put expectations on Belle to be Chai. But I would say that they're very similar in a lot of ways."
According to BBC, the process itself involves extracting DNA from the pet to be cloned, then injecting that into a donor egg that has had its genetic material removed. The egg then grows into an embryo before being implanted into a surrogate mother, who then gives birth to the kitten.
Pet cloning has become an increasingly popular practice, , despite how controversial and expensive it is, with celebrities like Barbra Streisand and Simon Cowell using the process to clone their own beloved pets.
Anderson, who decided to document her story on social media added that people have mixed reactions to the process.
"I think there's people who are fascinated and don't even realise that we're cloning animals ... so a lot of people are learning about cloning," she said.
"But a lot of people also have opinions. So it's a mixed bag."
Images: Weekend Today