Cc the cat

CopyCat

(born

December 22,2001)

Rainbow (left) and the daughter

CC

, short for CopyCat or Carbon Copy, is a tiger-tabby domestic shorthair and the first cloned pet. CopyCat's surrogate mother is a tabby, but her clone mother, Rainbow, is a calico domestic shorthair. The hair coloration difference is due to X-linked inactivation. She is the only one of 87 cloned embryos that survived. Her existence was announced by the scientists in February 2002 after her survival was ascertained.

CC was born at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M University, under the direction of Dr. Mark Westhusin, in collaboration with Dr. Taeyoung Shin. The project is funded by Genetic Savings & Clone, which wishes to profit from those pet owners wishing to resurrect their dead pets. Operation Cc was actually an experiment in a larger project, called Missyplicity, to clone a dog (Missy) owned by John Sperling, a university founder.

CC is now living in the household of Duane Kraemer, one of the team members of this operation.