Seven months after Huang Yu's pet cat Garlic died, the British shorthair has been given a 10th life.

Key points: The owner said he could not face his cat Garlic's sudden death seven months ago

The owner said he could not face his cat Garlic's sudden death seven months ago The CEO of the company behind Garlic's second incarnation expects pet cloning to rocket given China's growing pet market

The CEO of the company behind Garlic's second incarnation expects pet cloning to rocket given China's growing pet market Scientists are now working on the theory that if cats can be cloned, so can pandas

Born on July 21, the new Garlic was created by Chinese firm Sinogene, becoming the Beijing-based company's first successfully copied cat.

The pet-cloning outfit has made more than 40 pet dogs so far — a procedure that costs a hefty 380,000 yuan ($78,109), while the price for a cat comes in at 250,000 yuan ($51,382).

Mi Jidong, the company's chief executive officer, told AFP that despite the high price tag, not all clients were high earners.

"In fact, a large proportion of customers are young people who have only graduated in the last few years," he said.

"Whatever the origin of pets, owners will see them as part of the family. Pet cloning meets the emotional needs of young generations."

Mr Huang, 23, was overjoyed on first seeing Garlic's second incarnation, saying the "similarity between the two cats is more than 90 per cent".

"When Garlic died, I was very sad," said Mr Huang. "I couldn't face the facts because it was a sudden death."

The similarity between Garlic and his second incarnation is reportedly over 90 per cent. ( STR/AFP )

"I blame myself for not taking him to the hospital in time, which led to his death."

The happy owner said he hoped the personality of the new Garlic would be as similar to his old white-and-grey cat as its appearance.

High hopes for animal cloning

With a growing pet market in China, and a huge appetite among their owners for spending, Mr Mi believes the market for pet cloning is set to rocket.

According to a report by Pet Fair Asia and pet website Goumin.com, pet-related spending in China reached 170.8 billion yuan ($35.1 billion) in 2018.

And the country's scientists have big aspirations for their next cloning challenge — working on the theory that if cats can be cloned, so can pandas.

Chen Dayuan — an expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who has been researching giant panda cloning for 20 years — said there could even be scope for cats to give birth to cloned baby pandas, which are smaller than baby cats despite their large size when fully grown.

Pet cloning is illegal in many countries but approved in countries including South Korea and the US, where singer Barbra Streisand announced last year she had cloned her dog.

The first major success in animal cloning was Dolly the sheep, born in Britain in 1996 as the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.

Four genetically identical copies of Dolly were cloned 11 years after the famous cloned sheep, who suffered ill health and died prematurely in 2003.

In 2005, researchers in South Korea cloned the first dog. The Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in Seoul said it had so far cloned some 800 pets, charging $100,000 each.

AFP