Main image via Next Shark + The New York Times
We all love our pets but when they pass on, the pain feels all too real. This man from China decided that he didn’t want to say goodbye and came up with a better solution.
via GIPHY
According to the Shanghaiist, Huang Yu from China was devastated after his British shorthair cat named Garlic passed away.
After burying Garlic, the 23-year-old businessman heard about a Beijing-based animal cloning company called Sinogene and changed his mind. He decided that he’d bring Garlic back to life!
via GIPHY
Huang Yu went back to the park he had buried his beloved cat, dug him back and kept his remains in his refrigerator.
According to the site, Huang Yu had blamed himself for the passing of Garlic earlier this year due to a urinary tract infection.
“My cat (also called Dasuan) died of illness in January,” he said to China Daily. “If it weren’t for my carelessness in missing the best time for his treatment, he would be 3-years-old now.”
Image via The New York Times
“In my heart, Garlic is irreplaceable,” Huang Yu told The New York Times. “Garlic didn’t leave anything for future generations, so I could only choose to clone.”
He reached out to Sinogene about cloning the cat and the company took skin cells and DNA samples from Garlic’s remains and put them into feline eggs. Ultimately, 40 cloned embryos were placed in surrogate cats but only one made it to full term, thus Garlic 2.0 was born.
“Although the surrogate mother, a 2-year-old domestic cat, is not the same breed as Dasuan, she is showing great maternal instincts and taking good care of the cloned offspring,” Vice President of Sinogene, Zhao Jianping said.
Image via Next Shark
While the cloned kitten does not look 100% like the original Garlic, its close enough. According to Zhao, the new kitten has a great chance of having similar behaviours to that of the first Garlic.
“The cloned kitten is 90 percent like my original cat,” the businessman said.
Image via The New York Times
Born on 21st July, Garlic 2.0 became China’s first successfully cloned cat. Huang Yu reportedly paid 250,000 yuan (RM146,566) for the cloning.
After making a decision to clone Garlic, staff members of Sinogene told Huang Yu that it was best to extract the cells within 24 hours of death.
“I had already buried the cat by that time,” he said. “Thanks to the cold weather in winter, the body was relatively well preserved.”
Even though Garlic 2.0 has already been reborn, Huang Yu has to wait until October to take his copy-cat home.
“My family doesn’t understand why I insisted on spending so much money on cloning a cat,” he said. “But it provided me with a chance to ease my pain.”
Image via The Guardian
We totally understand Huang Yu’s reason for cloning Garlic and we’d do it with our pets too if we could. Would you clone your beloved pet?
Info via Next Shark + The New York Times