The Odd Couples: Some Strange Cat & Dog Bedfellows

Today's newspapers are full of stories about Honey, the American golden retriever who is acting as a surrogate mother to a stray kitten called Precious. To the astonishment of her owners in Virginia, Honey took pity on the kitten when it arrived at their home and now is even suckling the malnourished youngster. Heart-warming as the story is, however, it is far from unique. Cats and dogs have both been known to adopt other species, birds in particular. In China, for instance, there were recent reports of a chihuahua that adopted an orphaned chick and a dog that raised a pair of tiger cubs in a zoo. My favourite story, however, is of the cat from Porto Alegre in Brazil that adopted a bird it found lying injured on the floor. Rather than eating it, the cat dragged the bird back to its home where it nursed it back to health. The bird repaid the favour by becoming the cat's constant companion, even when it had fully recovered and was free to fly away. The odd couple struck up such a close rapport that the bird began acting as the cat's evil henchman. The bird's twittering would lure in other, healthier birds who would instantly get pounced upon by the cat. A very strange relationship indeed, sort of Tweety Pie and Sylvester in reverse.