Mother Of The Year? Dog Nurses Kittens

When A Litter Of Kittens Showed Up At A Shelter With No Mother, Lily, a Mother Herself, Took Them In

(CBS)  Sunday is Mother's Day, so CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman has a nominee for Mother of the Year. It's this week's Assignment America.

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You can understand why some visitors to the Burlington, Iowa, humane society get a little freaked out. It's not everyday you see a dog have a kitten for lunch.

"Grab him! Grab the little kitty!" one delighted child shouted.

And not just a kitten - one dog Hartman visited was about to have a whole litter of kittens for lunch.

"Uh, oh," the child muttered as the dog nabbed the kitty.

The story of this unusual dining arrangement began a couple months ago. Lily, a mix of Labrador and who knows what, was found along an old farm road. She was pregnant and soon had six puppies who all got adopted.

And everything was fine, until the kittens showed up ... without a mother.

"And we didn't know what to do," says Teresa Kurth, who works for the shelter and helped come up with the solution. "I mean it takes a lot of effort to bottle-feed all these kitties."

"You know there's a big difference between a dog and a cat," Kurth says.

"Tell me about it," Hartman joked.

"Yeah, so we thought, let's just try," Kurth says.

Try and see if Lily would have the kittens for lunch. Which, she did - breakfast and dinner too.

"To see this dog just take to these baby kitties, instantly, I just think Lily is one of a kind," Kurth says.

Yes, and no. There was also the cat that heard an abandoned fawn crying for food and took in the baby deer.

Or how about the baby horse raised by a goat? The lioness who lay down with the antelope?

And perhaps most amazing of all, the leopard - who, in killing a baboon, unwittingly created an orphan. The leopard could have easily made the baby an appetizer, but instead, set down beside and mothered it.

From a strictly evolutionary standpoint, there's no logic to this.

If all that mattered was survival of the species, why would an animal show such grace?

Why would Lily, when one the kittens fell into her water dish, rescue the little trouble-maker and carry him off to safety?

Why? Other than the obvious.

"It's what she does," Kurth says.

Indeed, for most mothers, it's just what they do. An instinct so deeply wired into them - that often all they know is to love and care for life.

Understanding it completely will take scientists many more years - but feel free to appreciate it this weekend.

[donnamcgjomo]

I can only assume the story was good. I must do that because I was unable to see anything but commercials. Cute picture though.

[sjw1253]

I loved this story!!!

What upsets me is that it was so hard to locate on this website!!!

I wanted to forward to my daughter and grandson and it took me forever to find it!!!

I believe the story on Sunday morning was a little different than that of Friday evening and enjoyed it a bit more... It has been quite a chore (taking me over an hour to locate it...)

I am not a novice to the computer and I hope that the web designers read this and consider a way to make the Sunday morning stories a lot easier to locate...

Also I do subscribe to quite a few emails from CBS...

Is there a way to subscribe to the Sunday morning with Charles Osgood stories?

[bb19631]

This story has a sweet ending. Lily should be mother of the year.

[trbundro1277]

CBS dun good. mother mc cain and mama dog. real winners.
Posted by hermit22 at 09:10 PM : May 09, 2008
*** Mother McCain is no winner! She should have taught her son Juan not to let foreigners come in illegally and take jobs from Americans! She should have taught him that laws should be followed to help the American worker keep his or her job, not to let the Mexicans and other illegals get amnesty and take our jobs for lower wages! America for the Americans. Not America for the Mexicans! Say NO to Juan Amnesty Mccain! I don''t care how bad the Democrats are, as far as their nominee. Atleast unions back the democrats and the unions won''t want all that cheap labor coming in and taking away American Jobs. Anyone other than Amnesty McCain 2008!

[butch19571]

Good article/write up on this Mother''s Day weekend. I was wondering if there was a video that we can show the family that missed out on the airing. Well worth seeing again.

[dmkilloran]

I had the pleasure of watching Steve Hartman''s story-
Mother of the Year-Dog Nurses Kittens, this evening on the CBS Evening News.
The story was so delightful and touching, I couldn''t help but think how refreshing the story was and how wonderful it was to forget all of the troubles in the world for a brief few minutes and remember how precious life is.
Thank you, Mr. Hartman for your sensitivity and delightful commentaries.