The most expensive cat in the world

Monday, January 7th, 2008

Lifestyle Pets has created the most expensive domestic cat in the world. The Ashera GD has been genetically engineered to be hypoallergenic, and the price is nothing to be sneezed at, either. The admittedly stunningly beautiful feline retails for $27,000 (approximately £13,500).

Six of the cats were sold to the super-rich in December, three of them in Russia, apparently the company’s most lucrative market.

If you find genetic modification a dubious practice, or at the very least one which should be justified only when fighting disease and disorders, then it will distress you (as it does me) to learn that a transgenic cat, which will remain kitten-size throughout its life, is being developed for sale later in 2008. Already cats have been cloned at Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, South Korea, with a red fluorescent protein that makes them glow when exposed to ultraviolet rays.

We are fed the lie that genetic modification is good for humanity and for the planet, yet the reality is that commercial concerns aren’t going to restrict themselves to developing bug-resistant wheat or other ostensibly worthy-sounding goals. And of course, even aiming for those things betrays a belief that man, not nature, knows best and can reshape the world according to his own rather limited and financially-driven designs. Hell, we can’t even agree to stop heating up the planet when it’s obvious we’re heading for an end of everything scenario—and if we can’t stop releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, then what right do we have to adopt the arrogant belief that it’s okay to re-wire the animal kingdom and, ultimately, ourselves?

categories: all wired up, animals, healthy planet, rattle bag