Barbra Streisand loves her dogs. A lot.
In 2018, she revealed that after Samantha, her beloved Coton du Tulear, died at age 14 in May 2017, she had her pet cloned.
Those clones — her new dogs Miss Violet and Miss Scarlet — along with a third Coton du Tulear, Miss Fanny (named after Babs' "Funny Girl" character, she's a distant cousin of Samantha's who was bought from the same breeder), recently spent time at Samantha's grave.
On June 5, Barbra shared a photo of the visit on Instagram, captioning it, "The twins Scarlet and Violet honoring their mom (with cousin Fanny in the center!) 🐾." (Celebrity admirer Rosie O'Donnell commented on the post, "sooooooo cute.")
It's not the first time the music legend has taken Samantha's clones to visit the grave of their "mother." In March 2018, Barbra posted a pic of the "twins" inside a red dog stroller in front of Sammie's grave.
On her website, Barbra explained that she shared the stroller pic on social media because The New York Times, which ran a piece on her decision to clone her dog, had cropped the shot and she wanted people to see the whole thing.
"I was disappointed that they did change the picture I sent. It was cut in half in the actual Sunday paper (I guess for space purposes), but it destroyed the intent and specialness of the full picture that was shown online. The point is, my little girls were looking at their mother pictured on her tombstone! It's an amazing photo, taken by my longtime and dear assistant, Renata," Barbra explained.
During an interview with Variety that hit the Internet in late February 2018, the singer-actress revealed that the dogs were cloned from cells taken from Samantha's mouth and stomach. Violet and Scarlet "have different personalities," Barbra told Variety. "I'm waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have her brown eyes and her seriousness."
Last year, Money magazine has looked into the costs of cloning a pet. It noted that Sooam Biotech Research Foundation was charging about $100,000 to clone a dog in 2015, as reported by NPR. But in 2018, another company, ViaGen, had significantly cut down the price and was charging $50,000 to clone a dog and $25,000 to clone a cat. Its genetic preservation cost is $1,600. That allows for a person to make a cloning decision at a later date.