On March 3rd, CC, the first cloned cat, died in College Station in Texas at the ripe old age of 18.

CC for some people stands for Cloned Cat, or Copy Paste, or Carbon Copy. But, according to Duane Kraemer, one of the scientists that helped create her, her name is just CC, as far as he’s concerned.

The cloned cat was born on December 22, 2001. She was cloned using some cells from Rainbow, another cat in Dr. Kraemer’s lab. The latter was a calico cat, but some genes were not activated in CC, so she was born a brown tabby and white domestic shorthair, similar to her surrogate mother.

As soon as she was born, CC was already famous. This is because, even though Dolly the sheep was cloned five years earlier, CC was in fact the first pet to be cloned.

She was adopted by Dr. Kraemer’s wife, Shirley, and lived in a specially built shed in their backyard for her whole life. Unlike what you might think, the shed where she used to live was nothing many pets have the chance to experience. CC’s was two-story cat loft that had a caged patio, air conditioning, and running water. The cat shared her home with three of her offspring, Tim, Zip, and Tess.

Despite the fact that, when CC was born, scientists believed that cloned animals lived short lives and faced health issues, the cat was perfectly healthy and proved that a cloned animal can live unexpectedly long. She also had healthy babies- except for one, which was stillborn. She had her kittens naturally with another lab cat, Smokey. The family was closely monitored and did not present any more severe health issues than normal cats.

According to her creator, Dr. Kraemer, CC not only had different looks from her mother, but she also had a different personality.

“If you clone a cat, it acts like a cat. But it’ll have its own cat personality depending on its environment,” he told npr.org.

This is probably contrary to what people might expect when they hear the term “clone”. They usually expect identical animals that cannot be told apart, and they probably share the same personality. Science has proved though, that this is not the case, and not how cloning works.

Finally, as Dr. Kraemer admitted, his favorite thing about CC was the fact that she was the first cloned pet. He was happy that people were interested in her and in his scientific work. He even has a folder full of publications referring to CC. When she was given that folder by Texas A&M, he was told that CC was still the biggest story to come out of Texas A&M internationally. And he couldn’t be more proud of that.

Learning the first cloned pet’s story is of great interest, and it answers many questions people might have about animal cloning. CC might have died, but she will be remembered forever.

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Source: npr.org, Wikipedia, kbtx.com