Building a better pet

With the Christmas season now here, last-minute shoppers around the country are searching desperately for the perfect gift. No doubt many will bring home a pet for their loved one. And who can blame them? Kittens and puppies are cute. They'll make hearts melt on even the coldest Christmas morning. They will create happy, loving feelings right up until the first time someone has to clean up their poop.
Animals could be even more appealing as gifts this year. It appears we're entering a golden era when it comes to pet selection. Never before have we had so many options when it comes to customizing our furry companions.
Take the kitten. In the past our choices were limited to the breed of cat we wanted to own. Purebred or mix? Long hair or short? There are even cats with no hair at all, although they're entirely too creepy to think about.
But is a handful of breeds really enough? Can a pet truly help us express our purest identity when all we have to choose from is a bunch of different colors? One Wilkes-Barre, Penn. woman says no. That's why she started piercing the ears, throats and tails of kittens and selling them to the highest bidder on Internet auction site ebay as what she called gothic kittens. Because really, how many times have you looked at your cat as it lazed around the house and thought, "Sure, Mittens is nice and all. I just wish she had some more bling"?
I see a lot of opportunity here. Why stop gothic kittens? There are hundreds of cliques out there not yet represented by the custom kitten industry. Surely there is a market for preppy kittens dressed in Abercrombie & Fitch.
Vampires are popular now thanks to the Twilight books and movie. Kittens already have fangs. Now we just need to breed in a lust for human blood.
Gone are the days when pets are simply freeloading creatures that provide us companionship and unconditional love. Finally even the animals we surround ourselves can be creepy extensions of whatever personality we're choosing to take on at the moment.
Pennsylvania police, not nearly as enthusiastic about the potential for target-marketed felines, have arrested the woman in question and shut down her kitty-piercing operation.
Fortunately, there are other options. Even for people who can't wait until after an animal is born to start controlling its appearance.
We're talking way beyond doggie sweaters here. We're talking cloning.
According to foxnews.com a Korean company called RNL Bio has begun the process of creating carbon copies people's pets. Using preserved ear tissue from a California woman's dead pit bull the company in August created five genetic reproductions of the dog that died while saving its owner from an attack by another dog.
Michael Vick just got really excited.
This opens up all kinds of options for pet owners. All you pet lovers who were content to freeze dry your animals and stand their hollowed out corpses over the mantel as tributes to the years you've had together, it's time to kick things up a notch. Now instead of having a dead-eyed statue to bring back bittersweet memories you can have a living, breathing carbon copy of your beloved Fido to remind you every day of the good times you had with the original.
At $150,000 a pop pet cloning is not for everyone. But if you love your pets enough it's really the only way to go.
Besides, science fiction movies and Stephen King novels have taught us anything it's that cloning and bringing animals back from the dead always leads to good things.