#animal advocacy

How Hannah Shaw, The ‘Kitten Lady,’ Rescues The Most Fragile Felines

Hannah Shaw’s job title is “professional kitten rescuer.”

Known on YouTubeandInstagram as Kitten Lady, Shaw has rescued hundreds of neonatal kittens, often orphaned and unweaned, who are too small and vulnerable to be in an animal shelter. Kittens are a highly euthanized population in shelters because they require a level of care that most shelters cannot provide. That’s where Shaw steps in.

“They fit in the palm of your hand. Their eyes are closed. They need around-the-clock feeding and care,” she says. “Sometimes they have a life-threatening illness or they are in really critical condition, and I want to be able to give them the attention that they deserve so that they have the best chance to survive.”

Shaw’s new book, Tiny but Mighty, outlines how to care for the most at-risk felines, and she shares stories from inside her nursery. Her cover kitten, Hank, was dropped off at a pet supply store in a tissue box (hence the full name Hanky) with her umbilical cord still attached. Hank was not only covered in fleas, but her eyes were also infected, and she had panleukopenia, a virus that kills 90% of cats when untreated.

“She was my project for an entire week,” Shaw says. “For every kitten that I’ve lost in the past who had [panleukopenia], they’ve taught me something that helped me to save Hank.” After constant monitoring with fluids and tube-feeding, Hank emerged from her illness. “Her eyes were bright — she was like a new cat who was finally learning what it is just to enjoy being alive.”

Despite everything she goes through with her rescues, Shaw insists it’s not hard to say goodbye when the kittens get adopted.

“I always say that goodbye is the goal of fostering,” she says. “My goal always is to get these kittens from being so frail and so fragile and so vulnerable to a place where they’re so strong that they don’t need me anymore, and they can move on to their adoptive homes.”

Andrew Marttila and Hannah Shaw/Penguin Random House