There's nothing quite as sweet as the sight of baby animals being cared for by unlikely surrogate parents, but this surprising pairing is just so sweet you might get a cavity. Japan's tropical paradise of Okinawa is home to a chicken coop that now features three newborn kittens, who are being taken care of just like eggs by 400 parent-chickens.

Japanese Twitter user @ritou39 recently sent heartwarming pangs through the heart of the internet by introducing three kittens recently born at the Miyagi Nouen Plantation, where chickens are raised with extensive care. However, as the popular Tweet explains, the kittens were actually born in the nest-box of a chicken coop. While you would normally consider that as a cause for trouble and a clash of animal interests in a chicken coop, @ritou39 explains that the chickens are looking after the kittens as if they were eggs.

And as you can see below, it's not just one chicken looking over the cuddly furball trio. @ritou39 explains that as it appears in the picture, the environment is set up so that 400 hens freely walk around the coop, taking turns laying eggs. As such, the little kittens are being watched over by 400 mother hens.

And sleeping soundly!

And if all that didn't tug at your "awww" heart-strings enough, here is a video of the snuggling kittens sleeping the day away as their mama chickens do mama chicken things.

While it seems that these kittens are spending the daytime hours in the warming comfort of the nesting area, we hope that when they grow big and strong and spend more time with their mother, they can muster up a meow of gratitude to the mama hens that looked after them in their younger days.