Sugar: The Dog Who Mothered Cats

My dog, Sugar, was the most outstanding animal mother I have ever witnessed. I still remember waking up one chilly winter night and watching her give birth to a litter of three puppies in my closet. The curly-coated, off-white terrier barely noticed me as she tended to her new pups and then lay herself down to nurse them. Content that I'd just witnessed a magical moment, I tiptoed back to bed in my bare, eight-year-old feet.

Little did I know that, just a few yards down the hallway, my cat Dr. Seuss was also giving birth-- to eight black kittens. Our house was temporarily packed with baby animals: twelve altogether. Seuss, the cat, and Sugar, the dog, both tended to their young attentively, but it was Sugar's dedication that seemed most admirable.

Sugar barely left her newborn pups at all. At first, she lay with them every moment, only leaving her nest occasionally for a drink or a snack. But, when she noticed the kittens on the other end of the hallway, she started dividing her attention between the two litters. Every time Seuss left her kittens, Sugar stood guard and whimpered until the kittens' mother reappeared. Then, deciding that the kittens were safe, Sugar would race back to her own rapidly growing young.

As time went by and the kittens gained independence, Seuss spent less and less time with her kittens. Sugar, who was too dedicated of a mother to comprehend leaving a litter unsupervised for hours at a time, assumed that the three-week-old kittens had been abandoned. She then did what any overzealous helicopter-mom would do: she kidnapped half the litter and took them under her own wing. One, tragically, died as Sugar transported him back to her own nest. The other three-- Misery, Dread, and Bela Lugosi-- joined Sugar's pups as part of the canine family.

If Seuss noticed that half of her litter had gone missing, she gave no indication. The three dog-adopted kittens never cried for their mother or acted like they were uncomfortable or ill. Each time a human in my family returned them to Seuss, Sugar would promptly return to reclaim her adopted kittens. By the time the litters were four weeks old, both the cat and the dog had made it clear that Misery, Dread, and Bela Lugosi were no longer part of the feline family. They were, in their minds, puppies.

The three kittens, surprisingly, thrived on a diet of dog's milk, and, as they started eating solid food, they consistently joined their canine siblings for a bowl of kibble. When offered a can of cat food, they would decline and leave it for Seuss and her kittens. The adoptees gave no indication whatsoever that they missed their birth-mother or wanted to return to the cat's life. Instead, they happily played with their terrier mom and their chihuahua-mix siblings.

Perhaps the oddest part of this story of animal motherhood is Sugar's outright refusal to wean her adopted young. The puppies eventually gave up their diet of milk and instead favored solid food. The kittens, on the other hand, continued to nurse for weeks, then months, then, eventually, years. Even when they had grown into twelve-pound cats, Sugar-- who was no bigger than a shih tzu-- would roll over onto her side and invite them to nurse every time they came near. I can only theorize that this happened because of a rift in canine-feline communication.

Somewhere in an old family photo album, my mother still has the image of Sugar with her adopted kittens. In the photo, three large black cats are cuddled against the small, white dog. Dread is nuzzling Sugar's head. Bela Lugosi is grooming Sugar's shoulder. Misery is nursing, kneading her paws against her canine mother. Sugar's face holds a priceless combination of pride and confusion. I imagine hundreds of LOLCat captions, each attempting to express the thoughts on the animals' minds.

To most people, the image of a dog mothering three grown cats would be purely comical. To me, however, it will always remain in my memory as a steadfast expression of a mother's love. Sugar was willing to spend years of life defying nature, mothering young that she did not give birth to. Her instinct to care for the helpless overrode every other instinct that we ascribe to animals. There is no rational or scientific reason that a dog would willingly mother a cluster of kittens. She chose to care for them because she had a mother's love.

Sugar died in 2005, just as my childhood came to a close. By that time, she was missing an eye. Her fur was falling out. She was plagued by arthritis and often failed to remember me. A massive tumor had filled her abdomen, making it hard to eat and breathe. I was alone with her as she took her final breath and licked my tear-streaked cheek. Then, as I lay her body down to rest, I could see and feel the moment ten years before, when I'd watched her bring life into the world, then choose to nurture life that she didn't create.

Even six years after Sugar's death, I still feel like I owe her for teaching me so much about unconditional love. Sugar was there for her own pups, and for Seuss's kittens, and for the children of my family, in a way that even a human mother has to admire. I am grateful to Sugar for helping to make me the dedicated mother I am today.