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A beagle mix dog named Mary at the Pickens County Animal Shelter in Jasper, Georgia is very diligent in her duties as a foster mother to three little kittens that were dropped off at the shelter without their mother before their eyes were even opened.
Mary has seven little puppies of her own that she is also caring for, and shelter staff say she probably ended up at the shelter because her owners did not want to deal with a mama dog and a litter of puppies.
Judy Moody, Assistant Director of the Animal Shelter of Pickens County, said there is a nursing Mama cat at the shelter but she is already fostering some kittens, so staff decided to see if Mary would take on the job.
Mary sleeps with the kittens, grooms them, and cannot bear to have the kittens leave her side or, worse yet, be out of her sight.
We see in the wonderful video below that Mary will pick up her kittens and bring them to the back of her little nest, even if they are out being fed their kitten milk by a shelter staffer.
Ms. Moody and the other shelter staffers give the kittens frequent syringe feedings with kitten milk, but Mary’s role is very important, too. “If anything, it’s given the kittens the companionship of the litter, the mother, the warmth,” Ms. Moody explains in the video, taken by Mary Livsey.
“She loves her kittens. I took two of them away [temporarily] and she had a heart attack, poor thing.”
Ms. Moody took Mary and her kittens and puppies home for the weekend to care for them. All will be available for adoption when they are ready.
