In Hawthorne, California, during May of 2010, a chihuahua named Jolie (after the actress Angelina Jolie) added a newborn black and white kitten to her litter of pups.

Shelly Gomez adopted Jolie, who already had the pups, from Noah's Bark, a small-scale South Los Angeles no-kill animal rescue and shelter. While Jolie was nursing her newborns, the shelter called Shelly to see if the nursing mother could handle a couple more pups that had been orphaned.

When Shelly hurried to the shelter to gather the pups, an orphaned kitten began meowing loudly as though she wanted to go too.

"Want the kitten?" asked a shelter worker. Shelly, a pushover, knew the kitten would likely die without hourly hand-feeding, so she took it home.

But she didn't have to hand feed it by hand after all. The moment she walked in the door, Jolie got very excited and wanted to clean and clean the kitten. Soon she was nursing it. "She's a good mom," said Shelly. "She's so nurturing."

When the pups and kitten were weaned, Noah's Bark offered them for adoption. [Photos by Sean Hiller.]