Hearts Melt as Big Dog Falls in Love With Tiny Rescue Kitten—'Best Friends'

The beautiful friendship between a tiny kitten and the big dog who played a crucial part in her rescue is melting hearts online.

While taking a walk, Penny the dog stumbled on a tiny ginger kitten—crying and full of fleas. In a video shared by @thepennygurl with 1.5 million views, the owner shared how the pair fell in love and are now inseparable.

The owner scooped up the abandoned kitten, taking her home to care for her, cleaning her up and giving her food.

"I always knew Penelope had a fascination with other animals because her disposition has always been sweet, gentle, and kind," owner Melissa Garcia told Newsweek: "She was overly concerned for the kitten the first day we brought her in. She immediately wanted to lick her and protect her."

Penny couldn't wait to play with her new-found feline pal, but to keep everyone safe the kitten was first quarantined in a cage for a little while, so that they could get used to each other.

In the heartwarming video the pair quickly bonded, becoming "best friends."

Playing, cuddling, drinking and eating together—they are inseparable as the ginger cat grows bigger and bigger with the comfort of her canine protector.

"I kept them apart for a few days just to be safe, but after that, they were inseparable. I would find them playing together, Tangy would take naps with Penny on the floor. The minute she grew older and learned to climb, she was sleeping on my bed with Penny," said Garcia.

"Oh my heart," said one commenter on the viral video. While another wrote: "This is my favorite part of life. Seeing animals be buds & being taken care of well."

While we know that cats and dogs can get along extremely well, there is surprisingly little research into the relationships that cats and dogs form.

In 2022, Elżbieta Bombik and Jakub Mandał of the Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities in Poland published a study that looked at the behavior of cats and dogs coexisting.

Working with 87 people who owned both a cat and a dog, they gave the pet owners a questionnaire, asking about the animals' characteristics and their behavior towards each other while living together.

The results indicated that dogs and cats are largely friendly towards one another, by and large coexisting very happily with low levels of aggression.

Cats tended to be the less enthusiastic members of the pair as they were reported to be seven times more likely to keep their distance than their canine counterparts.

They also looked at some of the situations where conflict was most likely to occur between cats and dogs. One of these was where food was involved. Here, cats were slightly more tolerant, with 37 percent allowing dogs to eat from their bowl, while dogs were more possessive of their food with only 23 percent allowing the cat to share.

When it came to fighting for human attention, perhaps unsurprisingly cats were less worried about this than dogs.

In a situation where the human owner was sitting with one pet and not the other, cats were most likely to ignore the situation, while dogs are around twice as likely to approach in order to try to get some social interaction or chase the cat away.

In more than 1,600 comments on the viral video, people were thrilled by the friendship.

"Thank you for sharing this," wrote Wenfaja, while TikTok user Chel said: "It's really that easy to love someone so different."

"You can truly see Penelope's soft infatuation for Tangy, and I was happy to have captured it," said Garcia. "Animals are special and it warms my heart to hear how people are touched by their fur-iendship."

Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@newsweek.com with some details about your best friend and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.

Update, 10/18/2023 08:15 a.m.: This story was updated with a new picture and comments from the owner.