“Study nature, love nature,

Stay close to nature.

It will never fail you.”

Frank Lloyd Wright

Workers at the Meriden, Connecticut Humane Society are marveling at a black short-haired mother cat that has adopted a 6-day-old Rottweiler puppy rejected by its own mother.

This tiny pup, named Charlie by Humane Society volunteers, now nurses alongside a jumble of black and gray kittens recently born to Satin the Cat, who was taken to the shelter by an owner no longer able to care for her.

Charlie's mother was found by the side of the road in Meriden a couple of months ago. She gave birth to two puppies, but one was stillborn. As sometimes happens with a stillborn in the litter, the mother refused to accept Charlie.

Volunteers bottle-fed him every two hours, but the effort was exhausting for them, and insufficient for the puppy’s nutritional needs.

So, Satin the Cat quickly stepped up to become this tiny pup’s loving surrogate mother.   She had recently given birth to four kittens, and she very graciously accepted a fifth.  Her tiny feline offspring have already warmed to their tiny puppy ‘brother.’

"The kittens scrum up with him, and the kittens treat him like one of their own," one of the shelter workers said. "There's a certain social benefit of small animals being with each other."

The cozy arrangement between Charlie, Satin, and these four kittens will likely eventually change as the puppy begins to grow. Full-grown male Rottweilers commonly weigh 100 pounds.

But in the meantime, we could all learn a very valuable lesson from Momma Cat.

“In all things of nature,

There is something of the marvelous.”

Aristotle