Cloned to order, the £26,000 cat

The first cloned-to-order pet has been sold in the US, it emerged today.

Nicky the nine-week-old kitten cost £26,000 and was cloned from a Texan woman's pet of 17 years which died last year and was also called Nicky.

The owner had "banked" her cat's DNA, which was used to create the clone. She refuses to be identified because she fears being targeted by groups opposed to cloning.

She said of her new pet: "He is identical. His personality is the same." The creation of Nicky, born two weeks ago, has reignited fierce ethical and scientific debate over rapidly advancing cloning technology. Genetic Savings and Clone, the San Francisco-based company that created him, hopes to produce the first cloned dog by May. The demand for dogs is potentially much more lucrative than for cats.

Aside from human cloning, which has been achieved only at the microscopic embryo stage, no cloning project has fuelled more debate than the marketing plans of Genetic Savings and Clone.

"It's morally problematic," said David Magnus, co-director of the centre for biomedical ethics at Stanford University. "For that much money, the owner could have provided homes for a lot of strays."

Critics also say such use of the technology is frivolous.