Who says cats aren’t kind, sometimes?
Argentine police say a destitute 1-year-old boy was kept alive by a colony of stray cats who shared food scraps and kept him warm in the city of Misiones.
The boy, who had been missing for several days, was found by Police Officer Lorean Lindgvist, The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday
“The boy was lying at the bottom of a gutter. There were all these cats on top of him licking him because he was really dirty,” Lindgvist said. “When I walked over they became really protective and spat at me. They were keeping the boy warm while he slept.”
(More here. Thanks, Cindy.)
Perhaps it’s the neoteny/paedomorphosis thing: the mammalian instinct to protect those with big eyes, small noses, and big heads. Or perhaps they were just feeding him up for later…
Nicola Griffith 
There’s a really good fantasy novel in there somewhere…
Probably a bit of both. The cats are raising the boy to become Master Provider one day.
You are both undoubtedly right.
Considering the state of our species and our ecology, I say we start sucking up to the cats right away! I try to avoid anthromorphism and sentimentality, but I couldn’t help being moved by this.
We’re in cat withdrawal right now, being as we’re on the road, so this made me well up!
My cat loved cuddling with my babies. They were warm and smelled like milk. What’s not to love?
<>They were warm and smelled like milk. What’s not to love?<> Word by word, that’s what my wife says about babies. I still stay away from them, though. I’m definitely no cat, or at least not the cuddly kind.
I watched a pretty rad documentary on this elephant that adopted/was adopted by a herd of buffalo. Pretty interesting– the elephant (a female) kept killing all the bulls, as the male buffalo would challenge her for dominance (since female elephants lead elephant herds). She just didn’t GET it.
mordicai, I like < HREF="http://www.flickr.com/photos/35237093637@N01/26749873/" REL="nofollow">Owen & Mzee<>, hippo and turtle. It’s not news, but it still makes me smile— especially the bits about the old turtle being really cranky and annoyed with Owen at first.