This photo of Elsa, a Siberian/Canadian lynx is part of Fuzzybutt’s Flickr photostream. Fuzzybutt volunteers at the Barry R. Kirshner Wildlife Foundation in California. He’s posted many of his photos of large cats to Flickr, including a wonderful picture of him cuddling a worried leopard.
Recently both Wired News and BBC News have published articles on the two latest cloned kittens, Tabouli and Baba Ganoush. Unlike the first cloned cat CopyCat, a.k.a. Cc, these cats look remarkably similar to their genetic donor Tahini and even have almost the same coat pattern. This improvement in copying the original is mainly due to a new method called chromatin transfer that is supposedly more efficient and safer than earlier methods.
The company that performed this cloning, Genetic Savings and Clone, are now offering their cat cloning services to the public. For only $50,000, you too can clone your cat, but you’ll have to hurry as only one space is left for 2004.
Seriously though, even withstanding the fact that no one knows yet if this new cloning proceses is safe in the long term—animals cloned by the earlier method often had problems in later life—it’s hard to understand why anyone would actually want to clone his or her pet. A pet’s clone will never be the same as the original pet, despite being genetically identical, as the clone will have been raised in a different environment from the original.
Also, I have to wonder how emotionally satisfying having a clone would be, especially if the clone was a “replacement” for a beloved pet who has passed away. Whether the owner meant to do so or not, he or she would constantly be comparing Fido-Two to Fido-One, and any differences between the two could be seen as shortcomings of Fido-Two as opposed to just personality quirks of a different pet.
Part of the appeal of having pets that have personalities, such as cats or dogs, is the fact that all animals differ from each other and each pet is unique. None of my pets could ever truly replace another, and I wouldn’t want them to. I’ve enjoyed meeting and getting to know various animals, both furred and feathered, and my life has been enriched by all of them.
On the somewhat related subject of baby animals, congratulations are due for Miško & Ciuffo, the two resident cockatiels of sashaDesign, whose babies are beginning to hatch out. Unlike the two kittens in the picture above, these babies were definitely conceived the old fashioned way.
Cat-lovers in London between 21 August and 11 September 2004 should be sure not to miss Louis Wain & the Summer Cat Show, an annual exhibition of original Louis Wain paintings, along with works by other well-known cat artists such as Lesley Fortherby, Lesley Anne Ivory and Dede Moser. The exhibition is held at Chris Beetles Ltd, a well-known London art gallery. For those with deep enough pockets, many of the works on display will also be for sale, and for those with less money, there are usually books and other more affordable items relating to Wain and the other artists.
According to the brochure I received in the post this morning, all of Wain’s works and selected works by other artists should be available on the Chris Beetles website (linked above), but they do not seem to have been published there yet. Images from last year’s exhibition and other exhibitions at the gallery are on the site, however, and are worth taking a look at while waiting for the current ones to be posted.
I have yet to miss a Summer Cat Show since I moved to London, and I plan on not breaking that tradition this year. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves Wain or just loves cats in general.
The Details:
Tel: 020 7839 7551
Fax: 020 7839 1603
gallery@chrisbeetles.com
www.chrisbeetles.com
Harry “Chippy” McNeish, the carpenter on Shackleton’s polar expedition of 1914-1916 was denied a polar medal because of Shackleton’s anger after he questioned his authority after their ship, the Endurance, was lost. On top of that, Shackleton also shot his cat Mrs. Chippy for food (along with the dogs). McNeish never forgave Shackleton for that, and according to his grandson Tom McNeish, ‘I think the cat was more important to him than the Polar Medal.’
Now at last, in death at least, he is being ‘reunited’ with his cat—the New Zealand Antarctic Society is placing a life-sized statue of his cat on his grave. Mariska Wouters, the chair of the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Antarctic Society, said, ‘We can’t go back and give him a Polar Medal but this is one way of recognising what he contributed to the expedition. ‘
Thanks to my husband pointing out this story on Laban Tall’s Blog
As any cat lover knows, cats can sleep in the funniest positions, and The Moggy Horde’s Silly Sleeping Pose Olympics is a page I discovered today that is set up to celebrate the suppleness of the slumbering feline form. I know I’ve seen cats of mine in similar positions at one time or another, and I’m going to see if I have any suitable pictures of Pussolini to enter into the Olympics. If one gets accepted, I’ll be sure to mention it here first.
After I went to this page, I noticed that it’s part of Christy Marx’s website, and I wondered why that name was so familiar to me. I finally placed it when I went to the page on her writing and realised she was the main creator behind the 80’s animated series Jem, which I’ve recently been rewatching for the first time in years on the DVD set that just came out. Jem was definitely one of the better cartoons of its time period and was in many ways an American mahou shoujo ("magical girl") show, though I doubt it was directly influenced by mahou shoujo anime, as it would have been relatively obscure at the time in the US, even among anime fans.
So now I have one more reason to admire Christy Marx—not only did she create one of the great cartoons of the 80’s, but she also loves cats. Let’s all give her one Truly Outrageous meow!
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