Speculation: Genetic Modification, Starting with Cats

We are already doing minor changes to livestock and plants. Your pets will be soon. But how much? And what happens then? It is something to think about.

So let’s begin. Suppose you and your company have raised sufficient investors to begin making modified pets, specializing in cats. To keep from contaminating the natural breeds, as well as controlling the patent and supply, all are female and infertile. One of your goals, and selling points, is getting the price down the people who want cats prefer yours, and there are fewer people with unwanted kittens. We are getting close to the point of being able to customize the colors to anything. Dalmatian spots to bright purple, are soon available and the size from pocket size adult up to the size of horses. Soon you have people getting kittens that look just like miniature tigers and lions, and far fewer people dumping unwanted kittens at the shelter.

So far, so good. But some want a bit more, so you keep researching. With some work you improve the front claws into grasping hands that people don’t have to declaw to save their furniture and slightly improve the brains that they are easily taught to use the toilet, get water from the faucet and understand a few more words than you typical domestic house cat. This also makes them better able to care for themselves if left alone for the weekend. Understanding a bit about the dangers, any of them larger than the common cat, you also increase their loyalty to their owners and make them more sociable. And finally, you make them as long-lived as their owners

Such makes these new cats massively popular. But some of your customers and backers are demanding even more, so it is back to the lab for even more improvement. You make them so that upright on only their rear legs, becomes just as easy for them as all fours and improve the hands and arms able to carry things. And again you increase their brain size and mental ability to handle more complex social interactions, improving their loyalty and sociability even more. The market for these isn’t as large, but the tighter emotional bond now possible makes them go for enough that they are quite profitable.

But enough people are demanding more that you have the backing to make even more improvements. The next design reaches full human size in three years, has a brain ¾ the size of a human brain, with tighter bonds to their owner and responds to intimacy favorably, but doesn’t require it. The market size is even smaller, but the demand in that market will be out of this world, making them quite profitable.

Not you have some interesting questions to answer.

What kind, if any, legal protection should these “cats” have from abuse?

What should happen to them upon the death of their owner? Are they just part of the estate and what to do with them up to the state executor?

What other legal issues do you think will come into play?

And the big one; will something of this kind really be available in the future?

Thanks for reading. Comments and share it with people you think would find the ideal intriguing.