{"id":224,"date":"2007-10-08T17:25:51","date_gmt":"2007-10-08T17:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2007\/10\/golden-retriever-nurses-stray.php"},"modified":"2007-10-08T17:25:51","modified_gmt":"2007-10-08T17:25:51","slug":"golden-retriever-nurses-stray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/golden-retriever-nurses-stray","title":{"rendered":"Golden Retriever Nurses Stray Kitten"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Associated Press &#8211; October 8, 2007<\/strong><br \/>\nSTEPHENS CITY, Va. &#8211; A stray kitten has found a new mother in a golden retriever, who began producing milk for the little feline after hearing its cries. Honey hadn&#8217;t given birth in 18 months, but after her owner, Jimmy Martin, brought home the kitten, she suddenly found herself playing mom.<br \/>\n&#8220;She started licking her and loving her. Within a couple of days, Honey started naturally lactating,&#8221; said Kathy Martin, Jimmy&#8217;s wife. &#8220;The kitten took right to her, and she started nursing her.&#8221;<br \/>\nJimmy Martin noticed the kitten, whom the family dubbed &#8220;Precious,&#8221; about six weeks ago, when she ran in front of his concrete truck. After following her and realizing there was no mother cat in sight, he took her home.<br \/>\nThe kitten refused to drink from a bottle, and Jimmy&#8217;s mother, Ruth Martin, feared Precious would die.<br \/>\nThe family initially tried to keep Precious and Honey apart, fearing the dog would play too rough with the little gray-striped kitten. But Honey was elated at Precious&#8217; presence, wagging her tail and prancing all over the house trying to sneak a peak at her. Eventually, the family let Honey approach Precious, and the dog immediately took to her.<br \/>\nThe Martins said they told a veterinarian about Honey and Precious, and learned that interspecies nursing does happen on rare occasion.<br \/>\nPrecious now sometimes plays with dog bones, and Honey lets Precious gnaw on her like a puppy would.<br \/>\n&#8220;She thinks she&#8217;s a dog,&#8221; Kathy Martin said. &#8220;She&#8217;s really fit right in.&#8221;<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nCopyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press &#8211; October 8, 2007 STEPHENS CITY, Va. &#8211; A stray kitten has found a new mother in a golden retriever, who began producing milk for the little feline after hearing its cries. Honey hadn&#8217;t given birth in 18 months, but after her owner, Jimmy Martin, brought home the kitten, she suddenly found herself&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Golden Retriever Nurses Stray Kitten<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/golden-retriever-nurses-stray\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Golden Retriever Nurses Stray Kitten\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press &#8211; October 8, 2007 STEPHENS CITY, Va. &#8211; A stray kitten has found a new mother in a golden retriever, who began producing milk for the little feline after hearing its cries. Honey hadn&#8217;t given birth in 18 months, but after her owner, Jimmy Martin, brought home the kitten, she suddenly found herself&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/golden-retriever-nurses-stray\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-10-08T17:25:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Patton Dodd\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Golden Retriever Nurses Stray Kitten","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/golden-retriever-nurses-stray","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Golden Retriever Nurses Stray Kitten","og_description":"Associated Press &#8211; October 8, 2007 STEPHENS CITY, Va. &#8211; A stray kitten has found a new mother in a golden retriever, who began producing milk for the little feline after hearing its cries. Honey hadn&#8217;t given birth in 18 months, but after her owner, Jimmy Martin, brought home the kitten, she suddenly found herself&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/golden-retriever-nurses-stray","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2007-10-08T17:25:51+00:00","author":"Patton Dodd","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/golden-retriever-nurses-stray","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/golden-retriever-nurses-stray","name":"Golden Retriever Nurses Stray Kitten","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-10-08T17:25:51+00:00","dateModified":"2007-10-08T17:25:51+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/186e2b80f15c2a749e18f6781b9e4dbe"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/golden-retriever-nurses-stray#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/golden-retriever-nurses-stray"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/golden-retriever-nurses-stray#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Golden Retriever Nurses Stray Kitten"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/186e2b80f15c2a749e18f6781b9e4dbe","name":"Patton Dodd","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ea6\/ea67ccdc30915dc0263069ec4253344bx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ea6\/ea67ccdc30915dc0263069ec4253344bx96.jpg","caption":"Patton Dodd"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/pdodd"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}