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Honored Contributor
Posts: 10,199
Registered: ‎07-29-2014

Boston Terrier mama nursing very young KITTENS... :)

{#emotions_dlg.wub}Heck, I would nurse those wee babies if I could!Wink

Shannon Williams' Boston terrier, Memory, used to be afraid of cats.

Then Memory became a surrogate mom to a klatch of orphaned kittens whom shereportedly began to nurse, despite not having been pregnant.

According to the description on a YouTube video of Memory feeding the kittens, the little ones were found outside, cold and wet, when they were about a week old.

And right away, says Williams, 5-year-old Memory began cuddling and nurturing the wee cats -- two boys and two girls, named Don Mickey, Luke, Whiskers and Mittens.

"She's been very protective from day one," Williams told The Huffington Post. "On the second day that we had them, my daughter had one of the kittens in her hands. And Memory my dog took it out of her hands and carried it back to her dog bed with the other kittens.

"She would carry them up on the couch with her. If they got up and started to walk to the edge of the couch she got up, picked them up with her mouth and laid them down with her."

This was adorably unexpected, Williams said to her local South Carolina NBC affiliate, WMBF, for lots of reasons, including that Memory was previously terrified of felines.

"We had a cat and she ran from it", Williams told the outlet. "Even [Memory's] former owners said Memory was deathly afraid of cats."

Then things took an even more surprising turn: Memory started feeding the orphaned kitties.

"Yes, she did start producing milk," reads the video description.

Sounds crazy, right? But such a thing is actually possible.

"There is a condition called pseudopregnancy, or false pregnancy," Dr. Amy Welker, a veterinarian with the Union County Humane Society in Marysville, Ohio, told HuffPost.

In dogs, false pregnancy can come about due to hormonal fluctuations, and symptoms may include milk production.

Dogs going through false pregnancy may also engage in a "kind of nesting behavior," says Welker, who said the two months that Memory reportedly nursed the kittens is generally a sufficient amount of time before weaning, though earlier is also possible, if that's best for the mom.

"Or dog," she says.

Once they were on solid food, Williams gave away three kittens to local homes, where the new owners promised to keep their furry new family members inside, and said they'd let Williams and her daughter visit.

Worried that Memory would get depressed without her mewling brood, Williams decided to keep Luke.

"[Memory] is still acting like a mom to the one that we kept," Williams says. "He still tries to nurse from her. She lets him for a minute and then starts playing with him."

And what was it like for Williams, to find her cat-shy canine become a mommy to kittens? Well, that might be the only predictable thing in this whole tale.

"It was amazing," she says.


dog

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Honored Contributor
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Re: Boston Terrier mama nursing very young KITTENS... :)

Those pics were NOT that big before being ""QVC-i-fied""! Sorry.

Respected Contributor
Posts: 4,026
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Re: Boston Terrier mama nursing very young KITTENS... :)

OOOHHHHMG how cute

_____ ,,,^ ._. ^,,,_____
Esteemed Contributor
Posts: 7,953
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Re: Boston Terrier mama nursing very young KITTENS... :)


What a heart warming and precious story!

Honored Contributor
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Registered: ‎12-17-2012

Re: Boston Terrier mama nursing very young KITTENS... :)

Love is love ... it knows no boundary.

Fate whispers to her, "You cannot withstand the storm." She whispers back, "I am the storm."

Honored Contributor
Posts: 15,256
Registered: ‎05-11-2012

Re: Boston Terrier mama nursing very young KITTENS... :)

Awwwww....this brought tears to my eyes!

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Respected Contributor
Posts: 4,065
Registered: ‎03-10-2010

Re: Boston Terrier mama nursing very young KITTENS... :)

Both doggie and kitty look blissfully happy.
"Summer afternoon-summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." ~Henry James
Super Contributor
Posts: 790
Registered: ‎09-05-2010

Re: Boston Terrier mama nursing very young KITTENS... :)

That is so, so precious! Thanks for sharing feline groovy!

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Re: Boston Terrier mama nursing very young KITTENS... :)

Honored Contributor
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Re: Boston Terrier mama nursing very young KITTENS... :)

On 1/28/2015 Smaug said:

OOOHHHHMG how cute

I totally understand. Smiley Wink