Diamonds are forever, and now so is Angus the cat

Portland woman has the remains of her beloved pet made into a half-carat stone

By JANINE ROBBEN
Tue, Dec 9, 2003
The Tribune

It would be an easy thing to make jokes about: Hey, Harry, did you hear the one
about the dead cat that was turned into a diamond?

But talk to Stephanie Hortsch, and spending $2,300 to have a deceased pet's
carbon compressed into almost a one-half carat synthetic diamond begins to make
a weird kind of sense.
 
"I'm going to be the crazy cat lady for the Tribune," Hortsch said, laughing
comfortably as a photographer zoomed in on what is believed to be the first
synthetic diamond in Oregon made from cremated pet remains.
 
"I recognize it's kind of wacky," she continued. "But keeping ashes in an urn
is something people have been doing for a long time. Some people at work think
it's neat, and others are like, 'You're the strangest person I know.' But when
it comes down to their thinking about it, definitely more are supportive."
 
Hortsch, 37, is seated in an Old Portland-style house -- the house in which she
was raised and which she recently purchased from her father -- near
now-fashionably funky Northeast Alberta Street.
 
It is furnished eclectically, with an easy chair upholstered in a tiger stripe,
an eggplant-purple chaise lounge and African art purchased on a trip to
Tanzania. Like this conversation about dead cats, the combination makes a
weird, even covetable, kind of sense.
 
Hortsch's beloved black cat, Angus, is present in dozens of photographs; a
small, gold pyramid memorial, which contains some of his ashes; and the
beautiful, brilliant yellow diamond -- made from more of his cremated remains
-- that Hortsch received last week.
 
Hortsch had the stone made by LifeGem, a Chicago-based company that began
selling the stones in August 2002, according to company spokeswoman Sara
Girardi.
 
Girardi says carbon -- naturally produced during cremation -- is converted into
a synthetic diamond by a process that uses intense heat and pressure to
duplicate the way diamonds are created naturally in the earth.
 
Up to 3 carats
 
Sharrie Woodring, a gemologist for an independent gemological laboratory not
affiliated with LifeGem, said that such a process definitely is possible and
that other companies have reported making synthetic diamonds both larger -- 3
carats -- and more quickly -- 72 hours.
 
"Diamonds are almost pure carbon," said Woodring, who works for the New York
office of the European Gemological Laboratory. "So, diamonds can be made out of
anything carbon-based: humans, animals, anything organic."
 
Girardi said that her company has a patent pending on its process and that she
knows of no other company making synthetic diamonds from remains of pets and
humans.
 
Michael Remsing of Dignified Pet Services in Tualatin said LifeGem
representatives told him that Hortsch's was the first stone made from pet
remains ordered in Oregon. His pet crematory is the only one in Oregon listed
on the company's Web site.
 
Girardi said she was unable to say how many stones, if any, have been made from
human remains for clients in Oregon.
 
Girardi said the company understands that clients -- who have paid as much as
$14,000 for a 1-carat stone -- want to be sure it was made from their pet or
family member's remains. She said the company uses a 16-digit tracking number
to trace remains through the process.
 
Girardi said more than 100 can be made from one set of cremated remains.
 
A 16-year relationship
 
Hortsch had Angus for almost 16 years, ever since she first saw him, "as just a
little, teeny, teeny kitten," in a box outside a Bi-Mart near her college dorm.
He lived with her through her last two years of college, law school at
Willamette University -- Hortsch works as a public defender in Salem -- and her
purchase of her childhood home in 2002.

But he couldn't survive the colon cancer that was diagnosed earlier this year.
 
"It all happened very fast," Hortsch said. "Angus died on Father's Day;
technically the day after, after a late night run to Dove Lewis (Emergency
Animal Hospital)."
 
While Hortsch had seen LifeGems featured on the ABC television program "20/20"
long before Angus was sick, it was her father who did the Web research that
revealed Dignified Pet Services' contractual relationship with the gem company.
 
"I got to chose the color," Hortsch said of the diamond. "I chose yellow
because Angus' eyes were yellow."
 
Eventually, she said, she plans to have the diamond incorporated into a piece
of jewelry. For now, it's in a small, handsome wooden display box.
 
"I called my friend Louise and said, 'Angus is beautiful,' Hortsch said of the
stone's arrival. "It's just amazing that this is actually part of him.
 
"For a long time, it was just him and me. For me, he was that one special pet."