But Fisher is slowing down faster because he has incurable cancer.
"I try not to cry in front of him, it upsets him so bad," said Hooper.

In a matter of days, Hooper says she'll have to put Fisher down.

"Euthanasia is the only thing we can do to save him from terrible pain, but we're going to try to save his cells and may be one day have those cloned and have some more fishers in our family," said Hooper.

Before he dies, Sybil Hooper and her husband, Collins, will have tissue samples taken from Fisher. They say that they're shipping it to a South Korean company that specializes in pet cloning.

"This first step costs $1,000 and that's enough to get the samples taken, frozen and stored. They're stored for $120 a year until we're ready to go through the cloning process, which is rather expensive. It's $150,000," said Collins Hooper.

While the Hoopers are going ahead with their plans, not everyone agrees with the concept.

Aside from the fact that millions of unwanted animals have to be euthanized each year, critics say the very idea of pet cloning raises false hopes. They say that ust because the two animals are genetically identical doesn't mean they'll look alike or even act alike.

"You're not going to get fluffy back again, and I think that's the biggest misconception," said Teri Schweiss with the Houston SPCA.

"People think they're going to have a mirror image of their most beloved pet," she said.