Purr. Whirr.

Carlson says GS&C is using newer technology that reduces the risk of cloning mishaps. However, he says, "the efficiencies are not very good. It varies by species."

He says, "You are not getting one live born for every clone embryo. Most are not going to take, or abort early. That's one of the reasons cloning is so expensive."

Wave of the Future?

Cloning, says Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, "may in some ways be overhyped." Bringing back your dead pet is not all it's cracked up to be, he says. "The new dog won't know the old tricks."

And, Caplan adds, it's way too expensive for most people.

Nor is Caplan a believer in robotic pets. "I don't think people are going to bond with their robo-pets in the way they do with organic pets."

But the lessons being learned in the robotics clean rooms and cloning labs -- by the Libins, Dresser, Damiani and others -- may prove fruitful when the pets of tomorrow are created.

"Genetic engineering is the wave of the future," Caplan says. People will be in the market for animals that can live in apartments and are easier to take care of. And for pets that are more obedient, quicker to learn and, Caplan says, "in some instances even nastier than some pit bull situations."

We are seeing early signs of these lab-modified pets. The GloFish, a glowing zebra fish imbued with a fluorescence gene, arrived in pet stores last year. Allerca, a California-based company, is advertising the near-future development of "lifestyle pets" -- such as a short-haired cat bred for allergy sufferers -- using genetic technology. Time will tell if their techniques work.

There is nothing inherently wrong with pet modification, Caplan says, if it produces "pets that leave a smaller footprint on the environment." Or a pet with some worthwhile purpose. Increasing the life span of a cherished pet or curing its hearing defect or hip dysplasia is a noble cause, Caplan says. "But the debate will center in another direction."

He believes there is an appetite for "freakish traits" in pets and he sees an ominous coming day: the eight-legged dog, for example.

"Using genetic engineering to create freaks or oddities is wrong," he says, "in pets as in humans."

And the world will be divided between the natural-pet group and the engineered-pet group. "They'll probably coexist and sneer at each other," he says.