Hannah Shaw | |
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Born | Hannah René Shaw July 9, 1987 |
Other names | Kitten Lady |
Occupation | Internet celebrity |
Known for | Orphan Kitten Club |
Parent |
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Hannah Shaw (known as the Kitten Lady) is an animal welfare advocate and internet celebrity, known for being an educator on kittens. [1] [2] [3]
After leaving a consulting job to create training materials for animal shelters, [1] Shaw began a career as an animal fosterer who specializes in caring for kittens. She earned the moniker “Kitten Lady” from her efforts to educate the public in kitten rescue and foster care.
Shaw works as a foster parent for orphaned kittens, who would, otherwise, often be euthanized by animal shelters, due to a lack of resources and space to dedicate to neonatals. [4] She informs others on how to foster kittens, reduce stray cat populations, and contribute to animal welfare through her videos on social media, in-person workshops, personal interviews, and public speaking events. [5] [6] She has also published several books on kitten rescue, or based on her fostering stories.
Shaw frequently posts on YouTube and Instagram, her channel and account detailing her rescue work, and featuring instructional videos and posts on kitten fostering. Once the kittens featured in her videos are old enough, they are adopted out, with Shaw saying "Goodbye is the goal". [7]
She runs her work through her nonprofit, the Orphan Kitten Club. [8]
Shaw lives in San Diego with her husband, Andrew Marttila, a professional cat photographer. [4] They met in 2016, moved in together the following year after a long-distance relationship, and were married at an animal sanctuary in 2023. [3] The couple traveled the world interviewing other feline advocates and photographing cats in their respective communities for a collaborative book to be published in 2024. [9]
Shaw is the daughter of Tommy Shaw, the co-frontman and guitarist for the rock band Styx. [7]
The cat, commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticed species in the family Felidae. Recent advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the domestication of the cat occurred in the Near East around 7500 BC. It is commonly kept as a house pet and farm cat, but also ranges freely as a feral cat avoiding human contact. It is valued by humans for companionship and its ability to kill vermin. Its retractable claws are adapted to killing small prey like mice and rats. It has a strong, flexible body, quick reflexes, sharp teeth, and its night vision and sense of smell are well developed. It is a social species, but a solitary hunter and a crepuscular predator. Cat communication includes vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, and grunting as well as cat body language. It can hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears, such as those made by small mammals. It also secretes and perceives pheromones.
A kitten is a juvenile cat. After being born, kittens display primary altriciality and are fully dependent on their mothers for survival. They normally do not open their eyes for seven to ten days. After about two weeks, kittens develop quickly and begin to explore the world outside their nest. After a further three to four weeks, they begin to eat solid food and grow baby teeth. Domestic kittens are highly social animals and usually enjoy human companionship.
The Munchkin is a breed of cat characterized by its very short legs, which are caused by genetic mutation. Compared to many other cat breeds, it is a relatively new breed, documented since 1940s and officially recognized in 1991. The Munchkin is considered to be the original breed of dwarf cat.
Marc Anthony and Pussyfoot are animated characters in four Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts. Three cartoons focus on the dog and kitten pair: Feed the Kitty (1952), Kiss Me Cat (1953) and Cat Feud (1958). They also appear in one Claude Cat cartoon, Feline Frame-Up (1954).
Beth Ostrosky Stern is an American actress, author, model, and animal rights activist.
Carnivore protoparvovirus 1 is a species of parvovirus that infects carnivorans. It causes a highly contagious disease in both dogs and cats separately. The disease is generally divided into two major genogroups: FPV containing the classical feline panleukopenia virus (FPLV), and CPV-2 containing the canine parvovirus type 2 (CPV-2) which appeared in the 1970s.
Cats communicate for a variety of reasons, including to show happiness, express anger, solicit attention, and observe potential prey. Additionally, they collaborate, play, and share resources. When cats communicate with humans, they do so to get what they need or want, such as food, water, attention, or play. As such, cat communication methods have been significantly altered by domestication. Studies have shown that domestic cats tend to meow much more than feral cats. They rarely meow to communicate with fellow cats or other animals. Cats can socialize with each other and are known to form "social ladders," where a dominant cat is leading a few lesser cats. This is common in multi-cat households.
Cat behavior encompasses the actions and reactions displayed by a cat in response to various stimuli and events. Cat behavior includes body language, elimination habits, aggression, play, communication, hunting, grooming, urine marking, and face rubbing. It varies among individuals, colonies, and breeds.
Betsy Reilly Lewin is an American illustrator from Clearfield, Pennsylvania. She studied illustration at Pratt Institute. After graduation, she began designing greeting cards. She began writing and illustrating stories for children's magazines and eventually children's books. She is married to children's book illustrator Ted Lewin and with him has co-written and illustrated several books about their travels to remote places, including Uganda in Gorilla Walk and Mongolia in Horse Song, as well as How to Babysit a Leopard: and Other True Stories from Our Travels Across Six Continents. She is arguably best known for the Caldecott Honor Book Click Clack Moo: Cows that Type.
A cat pheromone is a chemical molecule, or compound, that is used by cats and other felids for communication. These pheromones are produced and detected specifically by the body systems of cats and evoke certain behavioural responses.
The ship's cat has been a common feature on many trading, exploration, and naval ships dating to ancient times. Cats have been brought on ships for many reasons, most importantly to control rodents. Vermin aboard a ship can cause damage to ropes, woodwork, and more recently, electrical wiring. In addition, rodents threaten ships' stores, devour crews' foodstuff, and can cause economic damage to ships' cargo, such as grain. Vermin are also a source of disease, which is dangerous for ships that are at sea for long periods of time. Rat fleas are carriers of plague, and rats on ships were believed to be a primary vector of the Black Death.
Feline vaccination is animal vaccination applied to cats. Vaccination plays a vital role in protecting cats from infectious diseases, some of which are potentially fatal. They can be exposed to these diseases from their environment, other pets, or even humans.
A meow or miaow is a cat vocalization. Meows may have diverse tones in terms of their sound, and what is heard can vary from being chattered to calls, murmurs, and whispers. Adult cats rarely meow to each other. Thus, an adult cat meowing to human beings is generally considered a post-domestication extension of meowing by kittens: a call for attention. Felines usually communicate with each other via their shared sense of smell, yet with people they often make verbal cues around behavior, such as having a specific sound indicate a desire to go outside.
Cat training is the process of modifying a domestic cat's behavior for entertainment or companionship purposes. Training is commonly used to reduce unwanted or problematic behaviors in domestic cats, to enhance interactions between humans and pet cats, and to allow them to coexist comfortably. There are various methods for training cats which employ different balances between reward and punishment.
The Lange Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1993 in West Los Angeles, California, by Gillian Lange. The organization is a no-kill shelter committed to rescuing stray and abandoned animals and facilitating adoptions. Animals that are not adopted may remain at the kennel indefinitely without consequence.
Gwen Cooper is a New York City-based American novelist and author of the 2009 New York Times bestselling memoir Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned about Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat, a memoir about her life with an abandoned, eyeless cat that she rescued when he was three weeks old and subsequently named Homer.
The Amazing Acro-cats is a circus troupe of domestic cats and a few other small animals, founded by animal trainer Samantha Martin in Chicago, Illinois. One of the featured acts is the musical band, the Rock-Cats. The troupe, based in Griffin, Georgia, tours the United States for much of the year.
The Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association (VOKRA) is a no kill, non-profit cat rescue organization in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, providing trap–neuter–return services to Vancouver and nearby communities.
Djibi, the Kitten is the last novel of Felix Salten, published originally in 1945 and translated into English in 1946. Similarly as in other Salten's late books, the protagonist is an animal, this time a young female cat called Djibi.
Homer the Blind Wonder Cat (1997-2013) was an eyeless cat who served as the inspiration for the 2009 New York Times bestselling memoir Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned about Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat, written by Gwen Cooper. It detailed Cooper's life with an abandoned, eyeless cat that she rescued when he was three weeks old and subsequently named Homer.