Spitting Image

Dr. Kevin Christman (’11)
It was a first for Kevin Christman. The veterinarian at the Cedar Valley Veterinary Center in Cedar Falls collected small living tissue samples from a patient – a cat named Mr. Tufts. His owner was heartbroken when he died and she reached out to Christman to collect tissue samples so she could have Mr. Tufts cloned. “We had to sedate him and take a little skin, fat and hair – tiny pieces of tissue, like taking a biopsy sample,” Christman said. It’s the first time in his 10 years as a veterinarian that he’s done a procedure for cloning an animal. “Obviously, I’m science-minded, so it was very interesting and kind of cool. He was an awesome cat, so what better cat than Mr. Tufts?”