A dog has saved the life of a tiny kitten after providing a life-saving blood transfusion.

The six-year-old pooch named Bret Michaels by medical staff at the Nebraska Humane Society (NHS) animal shelter in Omaha, in the US state of Nebraska, brought in three stray kittens on Monday, 16th October.

The little kittens, reportedly one-month-old, were dirty, cold, and covered in fleas, and one of them, whom vets called Thorn, looked wobbly, weak, and lethargic.

Vets quickly concluded all the symptoms pointed towards flea anaemia.

The NHS said in a statement obtained by Newsflash: “For adult animals, a flea infestation might only affect a small percentage of healthy red blood cells in the body.

“But for this tiny guy, the impact was far greater. He needed blood – and he needed it now.”

An associate vet at the NHS, Katie James, said Thorn was ‘faceplanting’ and they did not expect him to last the night without a blood transfusion.

However, since cats do not have a universal donor type and the kitten could not wait for testing to be done to determine a suitable feline donor, the vets remembered they could transfuse canine blood.

The procedure named xenotransfusion, includes the transfer of blood from one species into the veins of another. It is considered a common practice in urgent cases.

James said: “I think I terrified a couple of other people when I said, ‘Yeah, let’s get a dog to transfuse into a cat. But, clearly, it worked!”

Since Bret had bloodwork done a day earlier, the vets knew he was a good donor candidate. They were relieved when Thorn’s condition started improving just after the first round of transfusion.

NHS officials said: “He had a sleepover with one of our vets and now he’s resting with his siblings.”

James explained that the kitten would reportedly replace the dog’s blood with his own blood in roughly five days.

She added: “His immune cells are building up, his dog blood cells are going down, but his normal cat blood cells are also increasing.

“A single transfusion should be enough to tip him over the edge for him to build up his own [blood].”

The NHS said: “A round of ap-paws for Bret Michaels for being such a calm and brave boy, and to our vet team for their quick thinking.

“Little man is now on the road to recovery, and Bret Michaels is waiting patiently for his forever family!

Meanwhile, a donor offered to cover Bret’s adoption fees, as animal shelter representatives claim he is friendly with other dogs, and came in as a stray dog only a couple of weeks ago.

He reportedly has one blue eye and one brown eye, a trait he shares with the kitten he helped save.

James said: “We joked that [Thorn] is as active as he is and as hungry as he is because he has some Siberian husky blood in him now.”

The vet named the kittens based on the titles of human Bret Michaels’ music.