COPYCATS (AND DOGS)

Nine years ago, a pair of freshly weaned British longhair kittens boarded a private plane in Virginia and flew to their new home in Europe.

- CAMILLE BROMLEY

Since then, a couple thousand dog, cat, and horse clones have followed, and every year the waiting list grows longer. Of course it does. Haven't you ever wished your pet could live, if not forever, then at least as long as you? Now it can, sort of.

WIRED spoke to a longtime customer service manager for the largest commercial pet cloning company. She guides pet owners through the entire process, from when they send in a piece of the old pet to when they meet—remeet?—the new one.

HALF OF OUR CLIENTS come to us after their pet has passed away. They're mourning. They're trying to figure out a way to cope with the grief, so they Google "What do you do when your pet passes?" That's when they stumble across us, and I'm often the first person they talk to. There's a lot of emotion. I'm happy to hold their hand through the process, because when a pet dies, especially if it's sudden, many people are not thinking straight. Postmortem, things have to be done very quickly.

After a pet has passed, the cells are viable for about five days. The body has to be refrigerated, but not frozen, because freezing damages the cells. Typically we would want a piece of the ear from the deceased pet. The ear tissue is hardy; it works very well. People don't want to think about their pet missing part of their ear, so that is sometimes a struggle.

Once the sample is at the lab, the first step is to grow cells in culture from the tissue, then freeze and store those cells. When everyone is ready to move forward with cloning, we transfer some of those cells to our cloning lab in upstate New York.