Carbon Copy Cat: the First Cloned Cat Called “CC”

Carbon copy cat – the first cloned cat is called CC. The world’s first mammalian clone was Dolly the sheep back in 1996. When the dog-cloning project had little success, researchers turned to cats. CC, the world’s first cloned cat was born on Dec. 22, 2001. How’s she doing after and how have our ethical and emotional side been changed or not changed?

 

Summary

Carbon Copy Cat

POINT BREEZE KINGDOM – LATE AFTERNOON
Servant H is at her desk with her headphone on. Johnny comes in.

What you listening, H?

An unexpected patting on her arm made H gasped.

WAA!! You here, your majesty?!

Servant H took off of her headphone.

What’s you been up to?

Well, I’m watching cartoon. Japanese cartoon which I’d watched when I was a little girl.

Why you put your headphone?

Because I don’t want to be taken as I am a person who watch cartoons during the day…

Which is what you do anyway, right?

Right…

Nothing to be ashamed of. What’s this animation about, anyway?

It’s called Perman[1]. It’s a story about Mitsuo, a boy who is given sets of mask, cloak and badge by an alien. Which makes him to have super power which normal human can’t do like fly in the sky…etc… What we children was craze about is his Copy Robot, though.

Wow, interesting setting. Ah, you mean this cute robot with no eyes nor mouth. Just nose-like red button on the center of its face. What is a Copy Robot?

This robot changes its form by anyone who touches this robot first. It will look exactly that someone who touched it. It is your second self. See, you can have another Johnny.

Another me? What’s good about it?

Oh, there has to be a lot of benefit like you can rest yourself while you let the other self work hard…

Hmm, so the main concept is to have a labor robot, which the term originally means.

Yeah… This is in animation world, but in reality, there are projects which goal is to duplicate the original. They’ve already worked on sheep, dogs… and cats!

Why trying to duplicate animals?

It’s to make pet owners’ dream come true, to have their lost beloved ones back in life once again.

…

CC, for “CopyCat” or “Carbon Copy” (born December 22, 2001), is a brown tabby and white domestic shorthair and the first cloned pet. CC’s surrogate mother was a tabby, but her genetic donor, Rainbow, was a calico domestic shorthair. The difference in hair coloration between CC and Rainbow is due to epigenetic re-programming, which normally occurs in a fertilised embryo before implantation.

— Wikipedia “CC (cat)“

Translation?

The initial attempt to duplicate cat’s DNA succeeded. And what we can learn from this is even with the same DNA, it doesn’t reproduce the same exact appearance, nor characters or behaviors.

Interesting. It’s like we go to the same restaurant and see exact the same menu, but what we order is different.

…Is that?

Well, it may not be a good example, but we see there are way so many environmental variables to play a role in this picture.

True. Phenotype is all different. It proves a clone is never actually identical.

 

 

In September 2006, CC gave a birth to four kittens. The litter included two males named Tim and Zip and one female named Tess who were fathered naturally. The remaining kitten, a female, was stillborn. This incident was the first time a cloned pet gave a birth.

CC appears to be free of the cloning-related health problems that have arisen in some other animal clones. “CC has always been a perfectly normal cat and her kittens are just that way, too,” says Kraemer. “We’ve been monitoring their health and all of them are fine, just like CC has been for the past five years.”

CC gave a birth

So that cat’s cloning experiment is successful so far.

Looks like it. We must notice CC had been handled a lot early on by humans and was curious and outgoing.

I see. You wanna duplicate me when I die?

…

Servant H couldn’t respond quickly.

That’s a tough question, your majesty.

Take your time, H. You may not have an answer for that question, yet. It’s ok. I was just curious.

…I may change my mind later, but I say I won’t do that for now.

Why not?

Because it is not you, your majesty. I don’t think I can tolerate each time I expect something and it acts differently. I don’t want to expect any behaviors or characters to project your quality onto cloned one.

Ok. So there will be no another me in the world.

No. Just original you.

Alright. I am glad with your decision that you stick to original me who I am here with you.

But I gotta tell you I truly understand some pet owners want their lost loved ones to resurrect. They want the same quality again which sustained their lives. Pets have that tremendous power as well as human company.

Summary

The first cloned cat CC gave a birth to three kittens. So cat’s cloning project succeeded without CC developed any cloning-related symptoms.

But if the first attempt to clone cat is wanting of the identical lost one, we gotta say it failed. The carbon copy cat really isn’t a carbon copy cat. This is because environmental factors come into play largely.

What we learned from the carbon copy cat is we can’t duplicate the identical cat including his personality.

What do we really expect when we try to duplicate our lost loved ones? It is not the genetic material which defines the immune system or the blood type. It is their personalities and behaviors attached to them we want to see one more time.

When cloned cat acts differently, shows unfavorable reactions to you, what would you do? That’s the most likely to occur.

Also, there is an ethical problem for cloning technology, but where there is desire, always a way will be made. It is emotion what drives human. The crave for lost beloved ones may never cease. Just one more time, one more second if we could see our beloved ones…

We have to add there was another attempt to clone lost beloved cat, by requesting of Julie (her last name was not released), succeeded producing Little Nicky in 2004. She paid $50,000 to have the cloned cat using DNA of a dearly loved cat Original Nicky of 17 years. He became the first and possibly the last commercial cloned cat. The California-based company which produced the kitten, Genetic Savings and Clone, later closed in 2006 due to the controversy of bioethics.

References

Scientists Successfully Clone Cat (National Geographic)

[1]Perman (パーマン) (Wikipedia)

Little Nicky (Wikipedia)
Pet kitten cloned for Christmas (BBC NEWS)

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Also published on Medium.