Ammon News - After two years and four failed attempts, a ragdoll cat that belonged to a Kelowna, B.C., woman has been successfully cloned.

Kris Stewart received not one but two kittens cloned using DNA from her beloved cat Bear.

Stewart said she sent Bear's DNA to ViaGen, a Texas-based pet cloning company, after he died at the age of five in a traffic accident in January 2022.

"I just felt like there was more living that needed to be done by Bear," said Stewart.

The process of cloning involves putting the animal's DNA into an embryo, which is transferred to the uterus of a surrogate cat who carries and births the babies, according to Kerry Bowman, a bioethicist who works at the University of Toronto.

The kittens, who Stewart has named Bear Bear and Honey Bear, were born on Jan. 10. After staying with their mother in the company's New York facility for eight weeks, Stewart was finally able to pick them up on Wednesday.

CBC