Shades of Mowgli!

Lovers of Rudyard Kipling's books will recall Mowgli, the lead character in the two Jungle Books, raised by wolves after being cast out of his village.

It seems that life imitates art once again. A one-year-old boy, lost in the streets of Misiones, Argentina, is reported to have been kept alive and safe by feral cats.

The one-year-old, whose ordeal mirrors Jungle Book character Mowgli, was discovered by police in Misiones, in Argentina, surrounded by eight of the animals.

The cats snuggled up with him during freezing nights that would otherwise have killed him, doctors believe.

The boy was seen eating scraps foraged by his feline friends while they licked him.

And they hissed as police approached the child.

Officer Alicia Lorena Lindgvist said: ‘I was walking and noticed a gang of cats sitting very close together. It is unusual to see so many like that so I went for a closer look and that’s where I saw him.




'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.

‘When I walked over they became really protective and spat at me. They were keeping the boy warm while he slept.’

The officer, who noticed scraps of food near the boy in the Christ King district, also told The Sun: ‘The cats knew he was fragile and needed protecting.’

Police have found the boy’s father who is homeless and said he had lost the boy several days ago while out collecting cardboard to sell.

He told officers cats had always been protective of his son.

It's funny how some folks are 'cat people' and others are 'dog people', with relatively few being fond of both species (I'm one of them). What's odd is how the animals themselves can sense which you are, and respond accordingly. Clearly his father's comment about cats 'always being protective of his son' shows that the boy has a 'cat-friendly' personality, and the felines recognized this.

Heart-warming news, particularly this close to Christmas.

Peter