A woman spent £19,000 cloning her dead cat because she believed the pet was her soulmate.
Kelly Anderson, 32, from Texas, was determined to bring back five-year-old Chai who died in 2017.
In discussion with Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary on ITV’s This Morning, she said Chai was “the closest thing she could describe to a soulmate”.
Ms Anderson added: “I lost her very young, so when she passed I remembered a conversation I had with my roommate about cloning.”
Biologically her new cat Belle is part of Chai because they share the same DNA due to the cloning process that cost £25,000 (£19,100).
She told unimpressed viewers while holding the clone on her lap. “Belle came into my life just last year. I was definitely worth the wait,” she added.
Ms Anderson admitted that while they look the same, Belle’s personality is “completely different”.
She explained: “She is her own cat. I never expected her to be Chai, I never wanted her to be Chai. It is a piece of Chai and that is what matters most to me, that I get to carry on a piece of her.”
Ms Anderson went to Texas-based ViaGen Pets, a division of TransOva Genetics.
The firm have been cloning horses and livestock for 17 years but three years ago started cloning cats and dogs.
A cloned dog costs $50,000 (£38,251) while a cat now costs $35,000 (£26,753) - the company recently increased the fee by $10,000 (£7,643) to cover rising costs.
