Lisa Simpson said:
I can replace him for another 70 bucks to the animal shelter?
I thought it was fairly clear that this was a reference to a (probably mandatory) "donation" to the cat shelter, and if it also included neutering (what about vaccination and parasite control?) it sounds like a serious bargain.
If you want totally free, wait till a friend's cat has kittens (my Caramel), or even better, wait for someone to pay you money to put a nice-looking young cat to sleep, pocket the money, and keep the cat! (My beloved Rolfe.) (BTW, the latter only works if you're a vet.) On the other hand, unless you're a vet again, you're going to have to shell out for neutering, vaccination and so on anyway.
I'm very ambivalent about all this cat cloning stuff. I do recognise that some people are very keen on the idea, but I'm extremely queasy about advertising or promoting the service.
I have to admit that if Rolfe had still been alive now (he died in 1992), I'd be tempted. Not because I'd think I was getting Rolfe back, but because it would be my best chance of getting a kitten as much like him as possible. And yes, I've heard all the stuff about how many stray cats could be saved and looked after for what it would cost to create a clone, and I don't think these are valid arguments.
Some people want to spend their money on diamond rings, or Rolex watches, or ocean-going yachts. You might say, but what about world poverty, but it's not going to stop them. And where do you draw the line? Should nobody ever buy an expensive pedigree cat because there are stray cats looking for homes? What if the cloning was no more expensive than Boris-the-Maine-Coon? If that was the only argument, I'd defend the right of anyone to spend their money as they see fit.
However, I have a host of questions about the welfare of the queen(s) who carry the cloned embryos, and I'm as yet far from being persuaded that the desire of someone to replace a much-loved pet can justify messing around another animal in the process. I also want to know what happens if they are successful in creating two or more clones. Since I'm damn sure they don't just try one embryo after another sequentially until they get one that works, it must be possible. How would any customer react to the information that another copy of their beloved pet had been put down, or palmed off to the local cat shelter, because they happened to have two embryos "take" simultaneously? Or do the owners agree to take more than one if that's how it works out?
Those questions seem very obvious to me, but I've never seen them addressed. You can't go into this and just shut your mind to whatever happens before the cute two-month-old kitten is delivered.
Rolfe.
