Barbra Streisand exists on a plane beyond what other humans can possibly conceive. She is a cultural icon, a diva, a woman who built her own mall in the basement of her house, and nodded along, polite but unimpressed, while the biggest pop star of our time sang for her. So, when she told Variety that her two dogs, Miss Scarlett and Miss Violet, are clones of her beloved Coton du Tulear Samantha, who died in 2017, I was like, “Yeah, that checks out.”
Before Samantha died, Streisand had cells taken from her mouth and stomach so she could be cloned, a procedure which costs about $50,000 per puppy. After the clones arrived, Streisand dressed one puppy in red and the other in purple so she could tell them apart, which is how they got their names.
“They have different personalities,” Streisand told Variety. “I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have her [Samantha’s] brown eyes and seriousness.” She also reportedly asked that the picture of her and her dogs be captioned “Send in the Clones.”
Her third dog, Miss Fanny, is a distant cousin of Samantha’s, and probably feels left out a lot of the time, if I had to guess.
Cloning animals is an expensive, and ethically questionable process, sure, but it does make sense for Streisand. I mean, how else was she going to top this?
