Julie got her 15-minutes of fame today; the cable news outlets ran a story on her cloned kitten and gave her a sound bite. John Kelso provides great commentary on blondes, this latest biotech horror, and felines. If this is (fair & balanced) ailurophobia, so be it.
[x Austin Fishwrap]
Texas ditz could've had a cat for free
By John Kelso
You probably read on the front page of this newspaper Thursday that a woman from up around Dallas paid $50,000 to a California company called Genetic Savings & Clone to have her dead cat cloned.
What kind of a nut case wastes $50,000 on a cat? Doesn't she have anything better to spend her money on, like whiskey? Let's assume for argument's sake that the cloned cat grows up to be 20 pounds. That means the woman has spent $2,500 a pound for this cat.
That's a little pricey even by Whole Foods standards.
The Dallas woman is named Julie. She wouldn't give her last name, but she let her picture be taken by The Associated Press anyway, meaning it ran all over the world. So do I need to add that she is a blonde?
The cloned cat, Little Nicky, is just exactly like her late pet, Julie said. Of course it's just exactly like her late pet. It's a cat. It spits up hairballs for a living.
Julie added that Nicky, the cat from which Little Nicky was cloned, knew 11 commands. What this means is that the cat was the one doing the commanding, telling Julie what to do. I know, because I have three cats who run me around like a Fifth Avenue doorman.
Among these 11 cat commands are: Stop feeding me this dried-up Friskies garbage; I just puked, so clean this pile up; Since you didn't change out the cat box, I'm going to dump over behind the TV set where you won't be able to find it until it begins to smell; Touch my tummy so I can claw the snot out of your arm; After I back up on this new couch, you'll have to set it on the porch or move; Let me out or I'm going to tear another hole in this screen; Fluffy this; I don't care what you're doing on that toilet — I'm coming in to watch anyway; Get this dog out of my face before I pop him a new zit; and, I can't believe you still expect me to fall for this "Here, kitty kitty" crap.
By the way, the lab where the cat was cloned is in North Austin. And people wonder why I hate going north of the river.
I really don't see any reason to clone a cat, other than for sighting in your Super Soaker. You want another cat? I'll tell you how to get one. Put some cat food on a dish on the floor of your garage and leave the garage door open. Pretty soon you'll have eight or nine cats.
This is because your neighbors all have cats. But as soon as these cats find out you're putting out better canned mackerel than they're getting at home, guess what? They're no longer your neighbors' cats. They're yours.
No kidding. Two of my three cats are walk-ons. One walked up starving 12 or 13 years ago because the boneheads who lived across the street weren't feeding it. The latest one walked up because the numskull college kid who used to live two doors down also had two pit bulls. The cat couldn't get past the dogs to get to her food.
When I called the guy to complain that his cat was so hungry that it was tearing up fertilizer bags in my garage looking for food, he said, "Which would you rather have me do? Let the cat out, or let the pit bull dog out?"
I told him to let out the pit bull. At least I can call the police on a pit bull.
Copyright © 2004 Austin American-Statesman
