US woman pays whopping $25,000 to CLONE soulmate cat who died aged 5

A woman paid a whopping $25,000 to CLONE her soulmate cat after it died at the age of five.

Professional dog trainer Kelly Anderson, 32, decided to clone her beloved pet Chai back in 2017 after she died from post-op complications.

She remembered a conversation with her vet-tech roommate about ViaGen, a Texas-based company that offers animal cloning services to pet owners.

So Kelly decided to preserve Chai’s DNA by having her frozen overnight at the vet.

Kelly, who lives in Austin, Texas, spent all night researching ViaGen and called them as soon as they opened to begin the process.

ViaGen took Chai's DNA and placed it into an empty egg, which was then placed into a surrogate cat.

After four years of unsuccessful attempts, Kelly was in utter shock when she got the call to say her new pet, Belle, had been born on August 20th, 2021.

She said: “They initially updated me after every attempt but after a while they stopped.

“Cells die off quicker when frozen, so they were only able to obtain about 6 million cells from Chai instead of the usual 10 million that they needed.

“It was so disheartening after every failed attempt, so I kind of ‘shut off’ to it.

“When I got the call, I was in shock. I had completely turned off my emotions.

“I had actually called them about something completely different - they rang me back so quickly that I knew something was up!

“Everyone else was really excited so I think my reaction was a bit anticlimactic.”