Ragdoll Cat Grandma Who Can't Stop Purring Over Daughter's New Kittens Is Sweetest Thing

One of the interesting phenomenons with pet breeders is that you get entire intergenerational families sometimes living in the same household. The mother and grandmother of my dog both had litters at the same time, and when we went to see the puppies, we saw both litters following the grandmother around, like a little army of cuteness. The breeder said grandma was a far more natural mom, and that the daughter had pretty much washed her paws of the pups as soon as they were weaned.

It’s great to have grandma’s help with babies, whether they are human or animal. I wouldn’t have survived those first few weeks after the birth of my children were it not for the assistance of my mother And it seems as if the grandma cat in this video is eager to step in as well.

View the original article to see embedded media.

I can’t get over the ardent purring in this clip of three generations of cats snuggling on a bed. Grandma Ragdoll cat Summer can’t stop cooing over her daughter Heidi’s litter of six adorable Ragdoll kittens. The kittens are utter newborns, still in their closed eyes, baby-gerbil stage. Poor Heidi certainly has her hands full, and that’s why it’s great that her mom is right there, helping to keep the babies warm, grooming them, and even providing tender loving care to her daughter.

Related: Ragdoll Cat Lovingly Tries to Comfort Crying Baby in Touching Video

In one section of the video, a baby, blindly groping for mama’s nipple finds instead, their grandmother Summer, and she is less-than-pleased (we don’t blame her). In another, exhausted mom Heidi comes to plop down close to Summer, hoping for a bit of allow grooming and TLC from her own parental figure.

“Summer, when I have my first I’m coming to you for advice, girl,” says someone in comments. Honestly? Same.

Kitten Development

Kittens are as helpless as human infants when they are born—maybe even more so. For the first three weeks of life, they can’t even eliminate waste on their own, and must be manually stimulated by their mother. Their eyes are closed, their ears don’t work, they are basically slightly fuzzy worms, capable of little more than rooting around in search of a nipple. This is why so few newborn kittens manage to survive if they are orphaned, and making sure a mother cat bonds with her baby is very important.

Poor Heidi has six of them to manage. It’s great to have the help of her mom.

Allogrooming in Cats

Not only do adult cats need to handle all the grooming and even elimination needs of their newborn kittens, but it also means that their own, often complex grooming schedules may fall by the wayside. In the video, you can see that Heidi is looking—well, a little more ragged than Ragdoll. But that’s to be expected. After all, the nursing needs of your youngsters may be causing a bit of a mess on her underside, and she certainly has her paws full.

Allogrooming in cats is the behavior by which a cat will groom another as a form of binding or social exercise. Cats can spend up to fifty percent of their waking hours grooming themselves. They are extremely fastidious creatures, a process that begins at birth when their mother regularly grooms them to help them perform basic elimination activities. Due to this early association of bathing with love and bonding, allogrooming is a practice that cats continue throughout their lives.

Which is why you can see that Heidi comes over anther sweet mother immediately gets to work on her arm.

Grandmas. Where would we be without them?

Looking for more PetHelpful updates? Follow us on YouTube for more entertaining videos.

Or, share your own adorable pet by submitting a video, and sign up for our newsletter for the latest pet updates and tips.