A dog and her ... kittens

Shyla a chihuahua cross has adopted seven suckling kittens. To watch in high quality visit: www.youtube.com/thepressvideos

A cat-loving chihuahua cross has given hope to a litter of seven abandoned kittens by suckling them as their surrogate mother.

For the last two weeks Shyla has been suckling the tiny moggies, who are now three weeks old and thriving.

While the two-year-old dog has never had any puppies of her own, owner Angela McFall said Shyla has always been a cat fancier.

"She prefers cats. She gets a bit bossy with dogs, whereas she loves cats,'' McFall said.

A cross between a fox terrier and a chihuahua, Shyla first nursed a ginger kitten brought home by McFall last year.

McFall, who works as a veterinarian, said dogs that have had a season on heat sometimes experience a false pregnancy.

"They start producing milk and they get quite hormonal. Shyla started nursing [the ginger kitten] which was quite sweet but unusual,'' she said.

McFall said that kittens hand-reared by humans needed bottle-feeding every two hours and were more likely to die.

She said that dog and cat powdered milk formulas were generally the same so it was likely Shyla's milk contained the right nutrients for cats.

Two weeks ago, when another veterinary clinic found a litter of stray kittens, Shyla was brought in as a foster mum.

"Shyla protects them. I've got two other dogs at home, bigger dogs. If they go near the kittens, watch out.

"Shyla cleans their bottoms and lays with them all the time. They are growing really strong and healthy,'' she said.

McFall said although it was unusual, it was not that rare and recently learned that Shyla is not the only canine surrogate in the country.

A three-year-old Dunedin chihuahua named Anna is currently nursing three two-week-old kittens.

The unwanted Persians were adopted by Anna's owner Carole Wiffen last Friday.

Anna, who had a litter of five puppies earlier this year, was nursing the kittens by Sunday.

Interspecies adoption isn't against the laws of the jungle either, as documentary makers for National Geographic found in 2006.

While in Botswana the crew filmed a leopard killing an adult baboon, unaware it was creating an orphan of a one-day-old baby clinging to its mother's belly.

When the leopard heard the tiny baby cry out, she gently picked it up in her mouth and carried it up a tree, as if it were her own cub.

The mismatched pair huddled in the tree all night, but by morning the tiny baboon had died. It was simply too small to survive without its natural mother.

Documentary maker Derek Joubert told the UK's Daily Mail that the leopard was like a mother cat rather than a predator with its prey.

"She forgot momentarily that she was a hunter. It was quite extraordinary and very moving to watch,'' he said.