Columnist Susan Snyder: Loving our pets, Take II?

Sunday, July 23, 2000 | 10:29 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

There's nothing wrong with reruns.

"I Love Lucy's" Vitameatavegemin episode bears watching several times, as does the one where Lucy and Ethel take jobs in a candy factory.

"Catcher in the Rye" is worth curling up with again, and who hasn't seen the original "Star Wars" at least a couple of times?

But thanks to Dolly the cloned sheep, scientists say that in the next one to five years we can clone our dogs and cats. A national news story released last week says for about $2,000 down and $10 a month a company called Genetics Savings & Clone will freeze your pet's DNA and use it to duplicate the animal later for about $200,000.

And to this I ask: Why?

I am the proud, if not misguided, owner of a 16-pound cat that hasn't allowed me to consume an entire can of tuna by myself in 11 years.

I cannot open a can of soup, peas or cranberry sauce without a 15-minute ritual that requires an explanation in "human" followed by a sniffing session to prove that he is, indeed, not interested in the contents of said can -- no matter what sound he heard.

To be sure, life would not be the same without the ungrateful little furball. For instance, sleeping in my household would reach beyond 3:30 a.m. if it were not for the Feline Waking Hour.

One can hardly expect him to understand the concept of "weekend." But how is it that he understands the concept of "daylight savings time?"

There are pets in this world for which owners would undoubtedly pay a fortune for a rerun. I know a woman in California who keeps the cremated remains of her beloved Siamese in a small, sealed wooden box. It travels with her.

However, I could not imagine my late father forking over six figures for resurrection of our late fox terrier Duke -- unless, of course, the animal is with him in heaven at the moment. This is a dog that would refuse to eat until my father got down on all fours and growled over the food bowl like a bear.

Imagine the reaction of my friends during sleepovers: "What's your dad doing?"

"Oh, he's feeding the dog," say I.

Before Duke there was Jiggs, the fox terrier my parents obtained before they had children. Mom made him scrambled eggs nearly every morning. Then it was a race to see whether Dad could get out the front door before Jiggs grabbed hold of his pant leg and smeared egg on the cuff.

Granted, we miss them terribly when they die, and those idiosyncracies are what we remember long after they are gone.

I recall, for instance, the day my furry-faced roommate discovered how quickly the toilet paper in the guest bathroom unravels. Guests now use sheets from a roll that sits gas station-style atop the tank.

A mouse chased under the stove. A live pigeon chased into the dining room that took up residence on the ceiling fan for an entire Saturday afternoon. Sunday afternoon strolls across the newspaper -- while I'm still reading it. Diving under the Indian rug after nonexistent critters.

There definitely isn't another cat quite like him. And that's as it should be.

I shudder to think about the day he's gone. But when it happens, it'll be the ASPCA -- not DNA -- for me.