Dog who longed for puppies nurses kittens

A Shih Tzu who, her owners say, longed for years to give birth — even to the point of going into false labor several times — finally is getting a chance to nurse some little ones: two stray kittens.
Owners Jean and Bill Schirf said the dog, named Geisha Girl, used to take a toy dog, wrap herself around it in her basket and mother it for a week or two.

Now she's doing the same thing with the kittens that Jean Schirf found two weeks ago in the woods behind her Cass County home just north of the Indiana border. The cats — a gray male and a gray-and-white female — appeared to be no more than 2 weeks old at the time, she said.

"She wraps herself around them all night long," Schirf told the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune for a story published Tuesday.


Not only did Geisha Girl start watching over and cleaning the kittens, which have been named Dilly and Dally, she started lactating within about a week — enough to provide them with some of the milk they need. Schirf helps out by bottle-feeding the cats 2% milk every four or five hours.


See the photos here

We have an English Setter who nursed one of our kittens for 3 months.. it was quite the thing. She had no milk, but this kitten would nurse on her for hours for comfort.. always chose the same nipple.. and by the end it was 4 times longer than all the others LOL

Casshew said:

We have an English Setter who nursed one of our kittens for 3 months.. it was quite the thing. She had no milk, but this kitten would nurse on her for hours for comfort.. always chose the same nipple.. and by the end it was 4 times longer than all the others LOL

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Animals can be quite nurturing. When we got my son a little kitten of his own, my male cat would let the kitten try to nurse from him. The whole time the kitten would be suckling to his nipple, he would lick the kittens head and comb its fur. It went on for weeks before the kitten finally stopped

I like this story better than the one a few posts down with the woman breastfeeding the puppy. My little Shitzu nursed a kitten a few years ago and also got milk in. I learned that it's not all that rare.

We took in an abandoned male spaniel puppy a few years back. He was very gentle and obedient. When our cat had kittens, and they were about three weeks old, I put them outside for some fresh air while I cleaned their box. I told the dog to watch them and he did. In fact he took his job so seriously that he always watched them, played with them, cleaned them and slept with them. Later when some of these kittens were older and would have kittens of their own, they always had them in the dog's bed with him standing guard. When the cat would leave the bed, the dog would lay down with the kittens. There was one kitten that wanted nothing to do with humans, but would always sleep with the dog and follow him around.