At the end of last year, Annabelle - a pregnant cat found on farmland on the outskirts of the ACT - was surrendered to Canberra Street Cat Alliance.
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A week after she gave birth to four kittens, three more kittens - just days old and without a mother - were given to the animal charity.
"The problem with neonates - which are kittens under four weeks old - is that they've got a high mortality rate unless they're with a mum," Canberra Street Cat Alliance president Vanessa Parton says.
"Because Annabelle's kittens were the closest in age, we introduced the kittens to her and she surrogated them, no hesitation."
The kittens spent Christmas with Annabelle and their foster carer and, having already been sterilised, have been adopted out to their new homes.
It's not unheard of for the Street Cat Alliance to try and introduce kittens to a new mother and litter, although Parton says it can be "hit and miss".
"We've had a pretty high success rate with that. We probably have one to two of those situations per season and we've had two this season," she says.
"A lot of the mothers are maternal so they will just take that baby in. But they can reject them and just hiss at them and it does affect the way they mother the other kittens if you continue with that process.
"So if there are any signs of them hissing and not accepting that kitten we won't continue with that process."
Luckily for the three abandoned kittens, Annabelle was more than willing to take them, even though, at an estimated 10 months old, she too is only a kitten.
A female cat is able to get pregnant at four months of age and has a gestation period of eight weeks. It is also able to get pregnant two months after giving birth, meaning a cat have kittens several times in a season.
This is something which Street Cat Alliance tries to get on top of, particularly, as their name suggests, with stray cats.
Since 2014, the charity has been trapping stray cats to sterilise. The cats are then assessed on their behaviour and social skills, and if appropriate are adopted out. For cats who are not suitable to be adopted out, they are returned to their colonies often in Canberra's industrial areas.
"They are released back to their home with a colony carer. They're not released into the wild, so they are released with supervision," Parton says.
"They're usually fed by the businesses ... who actually want them for rodent control. But wildlife is not in danger.
"We have trail cams as well that we monitor the colonies with as well. We can show you hundreds of hours of footage of these cats actually being scared of birds."
Each of the cats in the colonies is microchipped to the Street Cat Alliance and the charity undergoes any veterinary work required in the future.
For more information find Canberra Street Cat Alliance on Facebook.