Four families have made arrangements with the Garden State Animal Hospital in North Bergen to adopt four shih-tzu mix puppies that have been in the news lately because they have been mothered by a veterinarian’s cat.
The saga began about two months ago, when a neighbor brought a female dog to Dr. Kimberlee Young’s practice that had just been hit by a car.
“There wasn’t much we could do for the dog,” Young said last week. “She had a severe head injury. But I could tell right away that the dog was pregnant.”
So a quick-thinking Young went right to work, delivering four Shih-Tzu mix puppies via Caesarian section.
“I do a lot of C-sections in my practice, so this was nothing different,” Young said. “The puppies were about two weeks premature and didn’t have hair. We were able to revive the puppies. I tried to get them to nurse on their own, but they wouldn’t eat. I had to feed them with a syringe. It was a lot of work for me, getting up every two hours to stimulate them and feed them by hand.”
Three weeks after saving the puppies, Young’s personal pet cat, Yentl, a five-year-old champion Birman show cat, delivered a stillborn kitten.
“Yentl was very upset,” Young said. “She wouldn’t sleep. She was pacing all over the house and crying. She tried to mother the other cats. I could hear her all night long, crying and pacing. It was sad.”
One late night, Young was up feeding the puppies by hand when she had a bizarre idea.
“I handed her one of the puppies to see if she was game for it,” Young said. “I figured that Yentl had just given birth and I knew she had mother’s milk. So I just put the puppy in there to see what happened. Amazingly, she took to the puppy. So I gave her the other three. Yentl took to them as well. She immediately started cleaning them. She was purring. She was so happy.”
Young never saw anything like it in her 12 years as a vet.
“I’ve heard some freak stories before on television, but I never saw anything like this,” Young said. “Nothing like it at all. Once I put the puppies with Yentl, they all went right to her. I think she thinks that their hers. She cleans them and cares for them. She treats them like she would her own kittens. Yentl did have two kittens about a year ago, so she has experience as a mother.”
Sure enough, the four puppies have been living off cat milk for the last six weeks.
“It’s worked out great,” Young said. “I didn’t think she would take to them, but it’s been unbelievable.” Young has grown attached to the puppies.
“For the first three weeks, I was their mom,” said Young, who didn’t name the puppies because she didn’t want to get more attached to them. “If I named them, then I would definitely keep them.”
Young said that there have already been four families who have stopped by to adopt the puppies. One family is from Guttenberg, another from Bayonne and a third from Ridgefield. They can’t take the puppies just yet, because they’re not grown sufficiently. They need three more weeks of nurturing and care from their impromptu mother cat.
“It’s going to be hard to let them go, but we have to,” Young said. “We have to wean the puppies away from their mother. They need about three more weeks or so. We’re trying to separate them now a little bit more each day, to give Yentl some quiet time alone. But she always cries and wants her babies back.”
Ever since the story appeared in a local newspaper last week, the phone has been ringing off the hook at the Garden State Animal Hospital with prospective adopters. Now, the puppies are all accounted for.
Young will now look for a permanent home for Yentl, too.
“There have been so many people who come in and want to see her and the puppies,” Young said. “One woman wanted to adopt one of these puppies because she had four cats at home and thought that a puppy raised by a cat would be perfect to get along with. Everyone who comes in is just amazed by the whole story.”
Young said she’ll miss the puppies. But she has a lot of other duties that command her attention. “I also have five children at home, all under the age of 10,” Young said. “So needless to say, we keep busy.”
The Garden State Animal Hospital has other pets available for adoption. For more information about adopting any of the cats and dogs available, call the Garden State Animal Hospital, 9018 Kennedy Blvd., at (201) 868-3753.