A few hours after Sue Stabley brought six abandoned kittens home, something unusual happened - her dog nursed them.
The hungry kittens immediately accepted.
But why would a female dog nurse kittens and how common is nursing and adoption among animal species?
The original plan was for the kittens to stay with Sue for one night and take them to a local foster home the next morning.
However, Tizel, a two-year-old female Jack Russell, had other plans.
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"She decided to look after them," says Stubley, who lives in Suffolk, England.
"She licked them for several hours to clean them, and then nursed them. They stayed in each other's arms all night."
Maternal instinct was fully working with Tizel.
"If someone she didn't know came into the house, she would stand protectively over the kittens or put them back to bed if they decided to go somewhere," says Stabley.
This breaking of the stereotypical perception of the relationship between dogs and cats is actually nothing unusual.
For example, in Liverpool, a shih tzu puppy Hope was adopted by a Siamese cat, who got lost on the same day.
Of course, it's not just cats and dogs that do this.
In 2016, a cat from Ukraine brought two small squirrels among her kittens.
A year later, a case was recorded in Vladivostok, Russia, when a cat named Muska saved eight hedgehogs.
A pair of bald eagles took a young red-tailed hawk (the two species are mortal enemies) into their own nest and raised it with their three eaglets.
Why did such a thing happen?
Rachel Grant, a biologist at South Bank University in London, says such cross-species "adoptions" are likely the result of "fixed patterns of action" in which the adopting animal responds to a "certain trigger" of the adoptee.
Birds, for example, will see a red spot on their mother's beak and peck at it.
The mother returns the gesture by reacting to the gaping beaks of the birds.
This turns out to be a signal that can be manipulated.
Cuckoos, for example, exploit these "fixed action patterns" by getting other birds to raise their young for them.
Dr Grant says that the closer species are to each other, the more likely interspecies adoption will occur, meaning you're unlikely to ever read a story about a crocodile nursing a Chihuahua puppy.
"Baby mammals will have certain characteristics that they share with other mammals," says Grant.
"For example, cats and dogs are mammals and the cues that trigger maternal behavior in both species are very similar," he adds.
As for young people, they also behave instinctively.
So, in the case of Tizel, kittens react instinctively, just like human babies or puppies, looking for a teat to feed on.
"This behavior is not consciously controlled," says Grant.
Although interspecies "adoption" is cute and everyone comments enthusiastically on social media, it surely goes against our understanding of evolution.
But not according to Dr. Grant.
So, a strong maternal instinct showed that Tizel would make a good mother if she had puppies of her own one day.
What would be interesting to see, according to Dr. Grant, would be what would have happened if Tizel had already had a full litter of her own puppies, whether she would have adopted the kittens.
Maybe it would be different.
What's in store for Tizel and her kittens tomorrow?
"I think there will be some weaning over time, but that's good, because each kitten will get its own home," says Grant.
See: The door to a happy home for animals
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