The Minnesota Zoo is celebrating a major breakthrough in a decade-long attempt to artificially inseminate a clouded leopard. Researchers don't know if the procedure they performed earlier this week will result in leopard cubs, but they are happy to have even completed it. Clouded leopards are extremely hard to breed. The males tend to have low sperm counts and the females have erratic heat cycles. So a few months ago, researchers decided to use a norplant implant to shut down the reproductive system of a seven-year-old clouded leopard female, named Kuala. They then started her system back up by using hormonal injections to stimulate ovulation. That finally occured earlier this week and tropics zoologist Beth Jo Schoeberl (SHOW-burl) says researchers immediately sedated the cat and made a surgical incision directly in her uterus to inseminate her.