Gold Coast, Australia - When an animal shelter in Australia put orphaned kittens with a stray mama cat, the result was "almost surreal" – the mom accepted her new babies immediately!
An Australian animal shelter on the Gold Coast took in two problem cases at the same time, and luckily, they fit together beautifully.
The first was a stray female cat that still had milk from a previous litter, "but because she hadn't been nursing for a little while, she had started developing mastitis," care worker Trine Lise Frost explained on Instagram. Mastitis is when a mammal's milk duct becomes clogged and inflamed.
The second was a litter of three-week-old kittens whose mother could not be found.
It quickly became clear that the baby cats either needed a surrogate mama to nurse them or would have to be bottle-fed.
Trine and her colleagues decided to see if the stray mama would nurse the orphaned babies as if they were her own.
"Her reaction shocked us all," the Australian wrote in the clip. "She loved them from the very first second."
Stray cat mom loves the kittens "like they were her own"
The mama cat sniffed the tiny kittens and then cleaned them "like they were her own."
She then let the three stray babies nurse.
"And she started making biscuits because she was so happy," Trine wrote.
The shelter worker took the blended family home for monitoring. Trine also wanted to be there to help if the mama cat didn't have enough milk.
"The way she acted after introducing her to the kittens were almost surreal, she accepted them immediately and completely melted into motherhood again," she added in the caption.
The cats have now settled in very well in their guest room and are growing well.