Kelly has spent a fur-tune bringing her beloved pet back from the dead…
Cuddling my kitten Chai, I whispered into her fur.
‘I promise you’ll make it through,’ I said.
Chai was a cream coloured Ragdoll kitty
I’d adopted from a breeder I found online.
I was only 21 and hadn’t known the red flags to look out for.
But when I’d brought Chai home, I quickly noticed she was weak, sickly and barely eating.
A trip to the vets revealed she had five different bacterial and viral illnesses.
An animal-lover, I threw myself into nursing her back to health.
I often stayed up with her through the night, administering her medication and keeping her company.
Thankfully, by the time she was five months old, she showed signs of recovering.
Chai’s illness meant she hadn’t been fully socialised, so she had a reserved temperament around other people and animals.
But the two of us had an incredibly strong bond.
Whenever I was going through a tough time, she would pad
up behind me and curl against my back.
It was as if she knew how I felt.
When she was three, I started posting photos of her on Instagram.
She’s absolutely stunning, wrote one commentor. What
a gorgeous cat!
And I had to agree!
By the time Chai was five, her account had 80,000 followers.
One evening, I was making dinner, when my roommate
came home from her job as a veterinary nurse.
‘I’ve just found out something crazy at work,’ she said. ‘There’s this place called ViaGen where you can clone your pets when they die!’
‘That’s wild,’ I said. ‘I had no idea they could do that.’
‘Apparently loads of celebrities have cloned pets,’ she replied.
It was fascinating, but I didn’t think any more about it.
I had a hen party coming up the following week in another city, and
my flatmate was also going to be
out of town.
So, I organised for a pet-sitter to come and look after Chai,
my other cat and my service
dog, Ghost.
When I returned, Chai seemed fine. But over the next few days she became increasingly lethargic and stopped eating.
Concerned, I made an appointment to see the vet.
‘It looks as if she’s swallowed
a plastic meat wrapper,’ she told me. ‘We’ll have to perform surgery to remove it.’
‘Is she going to be all right?’ I asked, horrified.
I couldn’t stand the thought of
Chai surviving her early illness only
to die now.
‘We’ll do our best,’ she promised.
To my relief, she pulled through, and the following day I went to pick her up.
‘I’ll just go and fetch her, be back in a moment,’ the receptionist told me.
But minutes passed, and she didn’t return.
I suddenly had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
‘Something’s happened to Chai, I’m sure she’s dead,’ I told Mum over the phone.
And as she tried to calm me down, the vet came out with tears in her eyes.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she told me.
‘We found Chai unresponsive. She must have had a reaction to the anaesthetic.’
‘Please try resuscitating her a little longer,’ I begged.
But despite their best efforts, my gorgeous Chai was gone.
I was devastated.
Everything in my flat reminded me of Chai, so I went to stay with my parents.
Later that night, an idea suddenly struck me.
‘I’ve decided, I’m going to clone Chai,’ I told Mum.
Through my tears, I explained what my roommate had told me about ViaGen.
‘I don’t want to replace her,’
I explained. ‘She died so very young, I haven’t had enough
time with her.’
Mum was supportive and understood my reasoning.
The complicated process involved taking a skin sample from Chai and joining one of those cells with a doctored egg from a female cat.
Hopefully, that would create an embryo, that would then be inserted into a surrogate cat.
Any kitten born would be genetically identical to Chai, but
I knew to expect some variations.
The clones were almost akin to an identical twin, just born later.
I was terrified Chai’s body would already have been cremated. But fortunately I called just in time and they were able to get a sample.
The following morning, I rang ViaGen first thing.
The fee was a staggering £19,000, but I earned a good income through my social media work, and was able to secure a five-year loan.
My heart was still breaking for Chai, but now I had something to focus on.
It’s OK, I reminded myself. I’ll have a kitten for Christmas.
'Is she actually a real-life clone?
Usually, the cloning process took about two years, so I knew Christmas, which was 10 months away, might be a little optimistic.
But sadly, attempt after attempt failed.
Chai’s body had been in the freezer overnight which had lowered the quality of her skin sample.
The poor lady at ViaGen must have been sick of my constant calls for updates.
It was four years before they contacted me to say my kitten was ready.
By then, I’d had time to grieve Chai fully, and I was so ready to meet the little pussycat.
When I went to pick her up,
I could hear her mewing from the carrying case.
‘Can I hold her?’ I asked the ViaGen vet.
‘Go ahead,’ he smiled.
The new kitten looked almost identical to Chai, although the fur on her head was a slightly different colour.
She curled up and instantly went to sleep on my lap.
My heart melted.
Although it wasn’t quite like seeing Chai again, it was still very emotional.
For the first few weeks she lived in my bathroom, separate from my other pets.
I slept in the bath with pillows and blankets to keep her company.
My new kitten, who I named Belle, had many similarities to Chai.
She had a
sassy and aloof personality, taking charge of my other pets.
However, her early socialisation meant that she was happy to come with me to bars or cafés on a
lead, something Chai would have hated.
A few people were scared
of her when they found out
her backstory.
‘Is she actually a real-life clone?’ people asked.
As she grew up, I noticed
a few more similarities.
‘She’s a lot more affectionate when you’re feeling anxious,’ my boyfriend pointed out.
‘It’s as if she’s picking up on my moods,’ I agreed.
And just like Chai, Belle started curling up at my back whenever
I felt down.
Meanwhile, I had been documenting my cloning journey on social media.
Fans of Chai’s old page were fascinated to hear about my plan to clone her, and wanted to know everything about it. However, when I started posting pictures of her on TikTok, I received a lot of criticism.
Stop trying to play God! one commentor wrote.
Why spend so much money
on her when there are animals
in need? typed another.
But my decision to clone
Chai didn’t affect animals in shelters.
I did it because she deserved
a second chance.
Looking back, I can see I chose it as a coping mechanism for dealing with intense grief.
But I still think cloning Chai is the most incredible thing
I have ever done.
Chai was my soulmate pet, and getting to keep a piece of her has helped me so much in dealing with her loss.
I know Belle isn’t Chai, she’s her own cat.
But having her with me is comforting in a way I don’t really know how to explain.
And while I wouldn’t clone Belle, I’ve had skin samples taken from my dog Ghost.
Just in case I can ever afford another round!
Kelly Anderson, 35