Kitten Lady on Orphaned Cat Care | National Geographic

Hello, hello everybody, and welcome to my livestream! How are you guys? Happy International Cat Day! My name is Hannah Shaw, and I am known as Kitten Lady. I am a professional animal rescuer and a humane educator. I specialize in saving the lives of the tiniest and most vulnerable felines. I am so happy to be joined by all of you guys today on International Cat Day! What a great day to be celebrating these little teeny guys right here!

So this is gonna be really fun! We will spend some time together. I'll answer some of your questions about feline advocacy. I'm gonna do a bottle feeding with these little babies, and what I would love to do with you guys today is to help name them because these two kittens just came into the animal shelter. Here, I am actually on my book tour right now! I wrote a book called "Tiny But Mighty: Kitten Lady's Guide to Saving the Most Vulnerable Feline." This is a book all about rescuing little orphaned kittens like these guys, and I'm actually celebrating the launch of my book right now. I'm in Baltimore, and I'm working with Barks Animal Shelter.

Oh my gosh, you're ready to eat, huh? So what we're gonna do, and we just got these two little babies in, I'm gonna do a feeding with them so you guys can learn all about taking care of these little teeny tiny guys. And then I'll answer your questions about taking care of baby kittens. If you have any great name ideas for these two, let's throw some of those name ideas into the chat! I see some great ideas coming in: Sprinkle and Sparkle! I like your ideas—keep those ideas coming, folks!

And so, like I said, my name is Hannah. I run a YouTube channel also called Kitten Lady, where you can learn all of these skills. But this kitten is ready to eat! Check this out; she's actually trying to nurse on my hand. So why don't we do a quick feeding with her, and I'll tell you everything you need to know about how to do this stuff.

So these guys are orphaned kittens, or kittens who have been separated from their mothers. When these babies come into an animal shelter, they're really highly at risk unless there is a foster parent who can help them out. So I'm a big advocate for fostering little kittens because foster homes really do save lives. When you sign up to foster, you are responsible for basically kitten babysitting. You're taking care of them for a couple of weeks, getting them from a period of being very, very vulnerable like this to a period of being able to be adopted.

This little one right here, she is just about three, three-and-a-half weeks old. You can feel her little teeth starting to come in, and so she is hungry and ready to eat! She'll be ready to be adopted at eight weeks. So have you ever fostered before? Tell me in the comments if you have!

Right now, what I'm gonna do is show you a kitten care routine so you kind of know how this works. The first thing we're gonna do with our little kitten when we are ready to do our orphan kitten care routine is we're gonna help her go to the bathroom. The way I'm gonna do that is by stimulating her using some tissues. The reason that I do this is that Mom Cat will actually lick her young to help them go to the bathroom.

So you know when you're taking care of a foster kitten, you're going to gently rub the area down here around their little butt, so you can help them go potty, and they'll just go pee right into that soft tissue. She's like, "I don’t need to go potty, I need to eat some food!" So once they've gone potty, she went pee, and now we're going to give her some food. She is super ready to eat!

So, a couple tips about bottle feeding orphaned kittens: You want to always feed them in a natural belly-down position. Think how they would eat from Mom. They would, you know, walk up to her or kind of, you know, go up to her like on their belly and their belly would be down. And then they would nurse from Mom. So we're gonna keep their belly down, we're going to invert the bottle. You can see she is ready to go! Maybe I can bring her a little closer to you so you can actually see her eating.

We never want to forcefully squeeze a bottle with these little guys; we want them to suckle at their own pace. Sometimes you'll see, like, she's really excited, so she's trying to stand up, and that's okay as long as her belly is still down. Sometimes they want to hold hands with you or hold on to the bottle, and that's all good too, as long as the belly is always facing downward. When you feed a kitten on their back, they can aspirate—that's when the fluid goes into their lungs—and we don't want to do that!

So we're just gonna give her a nice big meal. Good job! She's very, very hungry! So this is what it looks like when you're fostering kittens. You can get all of the, you know, amazing joy and feelings of real triumph watching these kittens transform before your eyes. You know, they come in; they're so young and vulnerable, and you can, you know, give them the food that they need and the care that they need to be able to make it to adoption age. It's such an incredible gift!

I tell you everything you need to know about foster care in my new book. It's called "Tiny But Mighty," and it's got everything in here! Everything from, you know, feeding to how to give a kitten a bath, how to find an adopter, even how to take care of yourself when you're doing the work of fostering kittens. Because the truth is, you know, when you're fostering, you have to put your own self-care on the to-do list as well.

So let's see if you want any more food! Did you have a big meal, or are you happy like, "Listen, I'll always eat seconds." I'm the same way; I totally get it. Something that you might not know about these little kittens is that the majority of kittens are actually born outside, on the streets, in the United States. Eighty percent of kittens who are born every year are born to community cats who live outside.

So they're not necessarily born, you know, in people's homes; they are born outdoors, and then people find them all the time. Most kittens that come to me, you know, they're found in the craziest places, like, you know, underneath porches and in alleys and even under dumpsters and stuff like that. A lot of people assume that they, you know, have been abandoned, but actually most of the time, these kittens are born to cats who live outside.

There's a lot of cats who live in our neighborhoods, and they're called community cats. Community cats, you know, they live in the neighborhood, these are unknown cats. Even though these are cats who, you know, are not our pet cats, we still really have a duty to protect these cats too and have sterilization programs for them, so we don't have so many of these kittens being born. Because honestly, this time of year, it's kitten season, and there are so many kittens pouring into animal shelters! Here, we certainly don't need to be creating more of them, whether that's, you know, through intentionally breeding or through, you know, cats being born outside.

So I'm a big supporter of Trap Neuter Return programs. This is where you take the cats who are living outdoors, and you make sure that they're all sterilized so that there's not more population growth. It's so essential because these kids, they're coming into shelters in boxes and buckets and bins. You wouldn't believe how many of these kittens are coming into shelters every year, and they need our help!

Okay, so we're gonna do a little care routine with this one. You guys already know the drill now, so we're gonna help her go potty. I know, it's a little embarrassing to go potty in front of all of these friends, but that's okay, that’s okay!

So I'll look at some of the questions and let's see. How do I convince my parents to let me foster? Well, I think it's awesome that you are interested in fostering! I think a great thing that you could do is talk to your family about maybe fostering in the summer. If you are, you know, still in school, a great thing that you could do is, you know, while you are off in the summer, maybe you could foster a mom and babies. So even if you can't do, you know, little orphan kittens like this, you can always take care of a mom and her babies.

When you care for a mom and her babies, then you are able to actually, you know, just take care of mom. Mom takes care of babies, and then you get all of the joy of taking care of baby kittens without all of the workers, you know, waking up in the middle of the night and bottle-feeding! I think that's a great thing for families to do, especially, you know, because kitten season is in the summer when kids are off from school.

And let's see if we have any other comments. We have, "Thank you NatGeo for having Hannah on." Awesome! Thanks, Debbie! Yeah, if you guys have not watched my videos, I have a lot of videos on YouTube about kitten care. You can actually find me in the caption underneath this video; you can find links to all of my stuff there. But if you just look up Kitten Lady on YouTube, you'll find all of my information on there—how to do this stuff!

Really, the biggest message I have for you guys today is just if you are a cat lover, there is something that you can do to help cats—whether that's by adopting from your local animal shelter or volunteering; whether that's trapping the cats in your neighborhood for Trap Neuter Return or whether that is, you know, getting involved in fostering. Fostering is the greatest way that we can help these little guys because they are so, so at risk if they don't have our help, you guys.

But it's amazing what you can do when you, you know, change a life by just giving them, you know, a little bit of bottle-feeding, a little bit of bathroom support, giving them the medical help that they need! The great thing about working with an animal shelter like Barks—these guys are from Barks Animal Shelter in Baltimore—the great thing about working with an animal shelter is they give you all the support you need, so you never have to feel like you’re alone.

And I want you guys to know that if you want to help cats, there's a huge community out there for you! And that community includes me and my work as Kitten Lady. It includes this book, "Tiny But Mighty." It includes your local animal shelter. There are just so many people in this community who would love to have you as part of it, so please, get active in your own way!

Let's see some more comments. How do you regulate a kitten's body temperature? What a great question—that's awesome! Well, the way that you work with kittens and their body temperature is that kittens up to four weeks old, zero to four-week-old kittens, they can't regulate their body temperature. It's called thermo regulation; they can't do it without Mom Cat to help keep them warm.

So these little orphans always have to have a heat source at this age. You can use a heat pad, like a microwavable heat pad or an electric heat pad, or you know, if you are in my house, we actually have incubators for the babies, and that's something that can help keep them warm and help regulate their body temperature. It's really important to know that it's not safe to care for a kitten if they're really cold. A cold kitten, you know, they are not able to suckle as well; it can be really dangerous to feed them. So one essential skill for working with these little teeny guys is to keep them warm.

Let's see some more questions! And tell me, guys, in the comments, do you have a cat at home? We're celebrating International Cat Day today, so you guys tell me about your cats in the comments! I would love to know! We have a couple people saying that they are fostering kittens right now—that's awesome!

Let's see what other questions do you guys have? Somebody's asking how many cats do you have? Well, I have three cats of my own, but I have a revolving door of foster kittens, and that's because my goal is to save as many lives as I possibly can while I'm on this earth.

That means that I have a lot of work to do with these little foster kittens. They come into my house for about eight weeks; I get in the tiniest kittens, and then by the time they're eight weeks old, they're able to be adopted. So I'll have anywhere from five to twelve foster kittens at a time, and then, you know, they get healthy, get old enough to go to their new home, and they get adopted, and it's so joyous to watch!

I hope that you guys will check out my YouTube channel, which is called Kitten Lady. You can see a lot of fun stories on there, and of course, you can read a lot of stories in the book. And hey, if there are any kids or families with kids, I also have a children's book coming out! It's called "Kitten Lady's Big Book of Little Kittens," and it is a really, really fun adventure that is, you know, just teaching kids all about compassion for these little kings.

But let's get to the most important part: we have to name these kittens, you guys! I need your help! So please, we've got two little babies here, and I would love for you to help me name them! So put your best kitten name ideas in the comments, and I am going to check out what you have to say!

Let's see, and yes, happy International Cat Day, you guys! What a great way to celebrate with these beautiful little babies from Barks Animal Shelter in Baltimore! Now, no matter where you are, there are kittens like this, and they need your help—they need foster homes!

So let's see, we have Bumble and B, we have Leah and Asha, Toffee! Oh my gosh, you guys, you have so many great ideas; they're coming so fast! I want to see some great names that are paired names that go together! Oh, I love Storm and Cloud—that's beautiful! 'Cause these guys kind of do look like little grey storm clouds.

Oh, it's so fun to name kittens! You know, I've had to name so many kittens, and it's always a fun thing to do. I try to look at them and figure out what's a good name for you! So, how are we gonna do this together? How do you guys feel about Storm and Cloud? I love those names! And this one, I think looks like a cloud, 'cause she almost has a little cloud right there on her head.

So maybe for now, we'll call you guys Storm and Cloud, and your names can always change. But thank you to the person who made that great suggestion! I loved that name. It's also perfectly fitting for nature lovers, which, of course, all of us are!

I want to thank National Geographic for having me here to celebrate International Cat Day. It's been really fun hanging out with all of you guys and with these two, especially! I hope that you've learned a little bit about how to bottle-feed these kittens. If there's more that you want to learn, check out my book, "Tiny But Mighty." This has everything you need to know about how to take care of baby kittens!

And I'm gonna go snuggle these guys because, you know what? It's International Cat Day, and you guys gotta love your cats and kiss your cats at home! Thank you so very much for spending this day with me here at Barks Animal Shelter with these little kittens! Please get active for cats in your community, and thank you! Have a wonderful International Cat Day, you guys!