Just in time for Mother's Day (Squee alert)

[ScreamingMeemie]

http://www.chron.com/channel/petshouston/photogallery/Animals_mother_orphans.html

Here's a celebration of unselfish mothers in the animal kingdom that cared for orphaned or abandoned babies.

[Phentex]

1. Too precious!...

The squirrels freak me out a little but how sweet!

[ScreamingMeemie]

2. Hee...I picked the one with the kittens because the orange tabby looks

just like mine.

[nolabear]

3. Squee! Squee! Squee! All the way home.

The piglets got me.

Btw it's shockingly common for tigers to abandon their babies in captivity, probably a good indicator of how unhappy it makes them. I used to work with people who fostered tiger babies, and several of them had dogs who, while they didn't nurse them, acted as Mom and helped raise them. There comes a point though where those cubs are way too much for them to handle. I knew a poor, loving Bassett Hound whose "babies" just shredded those ears. She loved 'em like crazy, though, and suffered through.

[ScreamingMeemie]

7. Awww... the things moms won't do for their kids.

:)

[Aerows]

4. So sweet!

My cat killed a squirrel yesterday :(. It's sweet to see the cat that actually nurses baby ones. I'm not sure whether to be impressed or horrified at my cat, because the squirrel was huge. She's the sweetest cat I've ever had, but not to anything she considers prey, which is apparently anything slightly smaller than she is.

[marzipanni]

5. When I was a kid a friend of mine had cats that would

fairly regularly leave squirrel tails and other parts on the little porch off of the kitchen.
Does your cat eat her catch, or proudly present you with the entire carcass?

[Aerows]

6. She proudly presents me with the whole thing

You really don't want to know some of the things I've been greeted with.

[ScreamingMeemie]

8. That's impressive. A friend of mine had a cat who would bring them

inside and then let them loose in my friend's bed while she was sleeping. We figured she (the cat) thought she needed to teach her room mate how to hunt. :)

[Aerows]

9. Mine doesn't come and go as she pleases

I've already been down that road. My other cat brought a humongous live snake into the house and set it right down in the living room. She was so proud of herself. Luckily it wasn't poisonous and I was able to safely remove it.

She was in a completely screened in back patio - heaven only knows how she managed to find that on the patio. That was the last day that I left the sliding glass door open for her to ferry in and out as she pleased LOL!

[Curmudgeoness]

10. It was a chipmunk that I hand caught after the cats brought it in to me

that stopped me from leaving the door open for them to have free access. There was a mouth check every time after that.

If you have never hand caught a chipmunk, all I can say is "don't ever do it". Long sharp teeth----I had a trail of blood all the way outside. God, what I won't do to safe a critter!