The first-ever cloned cat, shown here at seven weeks old,
with Allie, her surrogate mother.

The team took DNA from an adult female tortoiseshell cat named Rainbow and injected it into a “hollowed-out” egg cell whose nucleus had been removed.

The egg was then ‘kick-started’ into life with an electric shock and implanted into a surrogate tabby mother.

The experiment, reported in the journal Nature, was paid for by John Sperling, an 81-year-old financier who owns a company called Genetic Savings & Clone. Mr Sperling says he aims to offer the technology to wealthy people seeking to clone their favourite pet animals, and wants to charge pet owners to clone their animals.

Cloned cats are expected to attract a price tag of around £7,000, although the price is expected to fall to around £700. Cloned dogs will be much more expensive, with £70,000 being the initial price, possibly dropping to a mere snip at £5,000.

Despite the hype, however, the success rate will have to be improved if pet cloning is to be a reality and highlights once again the dangers of cloning. Cloned animals also tend to be larger than normal and have been shown to suffer from immune system problems.

Tests have shown that cloned animals have shorter than normal lifespans and are unusually vulnerable to disease, according to research published in January. Scientists in Tokyo have shown that cloned mice die significantly earlier than mice conceived naturally. They also have weakened immune systems and suffer from pneumonia, tumours and liver failure.

The new mouse research was led by Dr Atsuo Ogura at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo. It examined 12 mice cloned from testes cells. The cloned mice began to die after 311 days, with 10 dying before 800 days. Out of a control group of seven mice that were conceived naturally, only one died before 800 days.

When the scientists examined six of the dead clones all had severe pneumonia, two had cancer and four had liver failure, they report in Nature Genetics. Their immune systems were also weak. The clones were created in the same way as Dolly. A cell nucleus and its DNA were removed from a donor cell and placed inside an unfertilised egg, from which its nucleus had been removed.

It was disclosed a few weeks ago that Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult, had arthritis in one leg, a possible symptom of premature ageing. Dolly was the only healthy live-born lamb out of 277 attempts at the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh. Earlier this year, Prof Ian Wilmut, one of the scientists who cloned Dolly, called for a full inquiry into the health of all cloned animals.

Premature ageing

In 1999 researchers found evidence that she may be ageing prematurely. Scientists at PPL Therapeutics, the company that worked with the Roslin Institute to create Dolly, looked at structures in her cells called telomeres. Made from protein and nucleic acid, these cap the ends of chromosomes, protecting them from fraying.

Telomeres have been linked to the natural life cycle of cells. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres become shorter until, after a predetermined number of divisions, they crumble away, allowing the cell to die. Dolly’s telomeres appear to be shorter than normal, suggesting that she may be genetically older than chronological age.

Despite the ongoing concerns over the drawbacks of cloning, the scientists at Texas A & M remain upbeat about Cc’s successful birth and the possibility of cloned pets at last becoming a reality for pet lovers worldwide.

“A kitten was delivered by caesarean section on Dec 22, 2001, 66 days after the embryo was transferred,” said a team spokesperson. “The kitten was vigorous at birth and appears to be completely normal.”

Tests carried out after Cc’s birth confirmed that the kitten was a clone - genetically identical to the donor.