In what year was the first domestic cat cloned?

The first domestic cat was cloned in 2001. The cat, named CC—short for Copy Cat or Carbon Copy—was born on December 22, 2001, at Texas A&M University and became the first cloned pet.

Scientists used somatic cell nuclear transfer, the same broad technique used to clone Dolly the sheep. They transferred the nucleus from a body cell of a female cat named Rainbow into an egg whose own nucleus had been removed. A surrogate mother then carried the embryo to term. CC was genetically related to Rainbow through her nuclear DNA, but she was not an exact visual copy.

That difference became one of the most interesting lessons from the experiment. Rainbow had a tortoiseshell coat, while CC had a tabby-and-white pattern because coat-color patterns depend partly on how genes are switched on during development. CC lived with researchers and later produced kittens naturally, demonstrating that a cloned cat could mature and reproduce.