Meet San Diego’s ‘Kitten Lady’
Speaker 1: 00:00 Getting a brand new kitten from the shelter is a joyful experience. It's amazing to see something so young, small and cute settled into a new home. But the eight week old kittens adopted at the shelter are mature compared to the kittens taken care of by my next guest, Hannah Shah rescues that tiniest newborns in San Diego. Kittens so young they can't see or eat anything but milk and baby food from a chance encounter with a stranded kitten. Rescuing the smallest and most vulnerable has become Hannah's life's work. She's out with a book with tips on how all of us can save these tiny newborns. It's called tiny but mighty, the kitten lady's guide to saving the most vulnerable felines and Hannah Shah. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. You brought two of your rescued kittens with you today. Who are they and can they talk to us at all? Speaker 2: 00:59 Hi Gordon, this is Gordon's first outing. Yeah, so this is Gordon and pepita. They are just under three weeks old and this is actually their first outing into the world. And these guys were unfortunately dropped off in a box at an animal shelter and so we don't know where they're from. Um, but we can very much assume that they were found outdoors as most kittens are. Um, Speaker 1: 01:24 can you tell us the story of how this obsession with kittens started for you? Speaker 2: 01:29 Sure. Well, I think like many rescuers I kind of fell into it. Um, I didn't find kittens. They found me a little over a decade ago. I found my first kitten outside and I had to make a decision, am I going to be someone who's dropping off a kitten at the animal shelter potentially to be euthanized or am I going to be somebody who's taking action and raising that kitten and doing whatever I need to do to make sure they have a good life. Obviously I chose to do whatever I could to keep that kitten alive, but I found very quickly that there weren't a lot of resources to teach me how to do that. So that kitten is my cat cocoa. She's 10 years old now. She still lives with me. And since that time I've raised hundreds of kittens. I have created hundreds of instructional videos. I've taught workshops all over the country, and I've really just aimed to create the resources that I wish I had had when I found my first kitten. Speaker 2: 02:21 Can you describe for us how young these kittens army, what they can and can do? How big they are? Uh, how, how tiny they are really? Yeah. So most of the kittens that I take in are just days old when I get them. Um, these kittens may have their eyes closed, still their umbilical cord attached. They can't, uh, Thermo regulate at all, so they can't keep themselves warm. I raised them in an incubator, but any foster parent can raise them even just with a nice heat pad. Uh, but these little guys for the first weeks of life, they're really just resting, incubating, and you know, being fed every couple of hours. And if they're an, like the kittens that I raised, they have to be raised on a bottle with kitten formula. Speaker 1: 03:04 Where do you find these kittens? These terribly young kittens? Speaker 2: 03:09 Well the majority of kittens born every year are born outdoors. So I would say I could count on one hand the kittens I've rescued that didn't come from outside. Most of my kittens are found by people either in their yards or in an alley. You know, those kittens can either come directly to us or they might end up at the local animal shelter. So I run a nonprofit called orphan kitten club and we partner with local shelters to take on the youngest kittens that they have and you know, raise them in our home nursery. Speaker 1: 03:40 Well what, what's the process you go through with these cats? [inaudible] Speaker 2: 03:44 well, when a kitten first comes to me, of course I'm assessing them, trying to understand how old they are. If they have any health conditions, you know, it's getting them, getting them to a proper temperature so that their body can handle the care that they need to receive. And then everything starts to change around four to five weeks of age. Suddenly their eyesight improves, their coordination improves, they become playful. And at that point it's all behavior and weaning. Teaching them what it is to be a baby cat, how to, how to do that. Do you have to evaluate their chances for survival while we will take on a kitten in any condition? And uh, you know, I, I really like taking on kittens who have medical conditions or are going through some kind of struggle. I love disproving people and showing that actually when you have a little bit of creativity and stubbornness and hope you can do a lot for these little guys. Of course there are kittens who may be in such critical condition that they cannot survive. But we've been able to do some pretty amazing things. Speaker 1: 04:49 So what happens after eight weeks and they're a sort of viable kittens? Speaker 2: 04:53 Yeah. So we have an adoption program through our nonprofit orphan kitten club and at eight weeks our kittens are spayed or neutered their backs unaided. They're obviously dewormed, they're microchipped. These guys are fully ready to go to their new home once they reach two pounds. And so we look for loving adopters throughout San Diego and even outside of San Diego, uh, who are ready to bring a new friend or two into their home. Um, we definitely love adopting out in pairs. Speaker 1: 05:22 Now we just ran a report on the damage that some environmentalists are saying is done to the bird population and other species by having feral and outdoor cats in the environment. And of course the San Diego U Maine society has a sort of trap and release program. Will they bring in feral cats and they'll neuter or spay them and then they will release them back out into the, into the wild, so to speak. How do you respond to that argument that these cats are in danger? Speaker 2: 05:51 Cats are already outside. The really important thing to understand about trap, neuter return is that we're not talking about putting cats outside. We're talking about the populations of cats who already exist in abundance on our streets, making sure that they are the last ones born there. So, um, I'm a major advocate for trap, neuter, return. In fact, every kitten I rescue, we go out to the community that that kitten is from and we seek out their family and we make sure they're all spayed and neutered. Um, so I think trap, neuter return is something absolutely everyone can agree on because it reduces the number of kittens born outdoors. That's good for wildlife. That's good for the animal shelter. That's good for taxpayers because of course it's expensive to be taking in kitten after kitten, after kitten. And what we see is without trap, neuter, return, these kittens will keep appearing in the bushes, keep appearing in the alleyways. Speaker 2: 06:40 And you know, I can tell you from personal experience, I spend a lot of time going out to the sites where these kittens are from and knocking on doors and saying, Hey, we have kittens from your neighborhood. Are there cats here? And the people are so very grateful that we are there to help them. Um, sometimes they've had just cycle after cycle of litters born in their neighborhood and they're so grateful to put an end to that through TNR. Your book is called a tiny but mighty. We know how tiny these creatures are. We can all envision that, but how are they mighty while I call it tiny but mighty? Because when I see these little guys, you know, you might think they're very frail and very fragile, but I see all of the potential that they have. They really have everything inside of them that it takes to be a mighty micro Panther someday. Speaker 2: 07:26 It's just that we have to help them, you know, bring that out. But the other reason that I called my book tiny but mighty, is really kind of a mantra for animal rescuers to remember that these mighty movements, these huge things that we need to do for animals, they're really made up of tiny components. Whether it's, you know, a person signing up to foster their first kitten or somebody trapping that cat that's in their backyard and getting them neutered. All of these small things that we do, these tiny acts of compassion add up to a mighty movement that really is going to move the needle for animal welfare. I've been speaking with Hannah Shaw, the kitten lady, author of the book, tiny but mighty. And Hannah. Thank you. Thank you so much.
