Woman with 4M social-media followers coming to Tacoma to talk kittens
Author and kitten expert Hannah Shaw will host a series of workshops on caring for kittens and outdoor cats in Tacoma on Saturday, May 17.
Shaw, who has written several books about fostering kittens and cats, is coming to Tacoma at the end of a nationwide tour hosting workshops on proper kitten and cat care. With May being peak kitten season – the time of year with the highest rates of kitten births – Shaw said she hopes her workshops will help average people get involved to help keep kittens safe.
“The outcomes of kittens is 100 percent tied to our ability to empower just regular, everyday members of the community to help them,” she told The News Tribune. “I think most people just have absolutely no idea that these kittens, their only lifeline is a foster parent, and a foster parent can be just anyone.”
The Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County will host the day of workshops at the Hotel Murano in downtown Tacoma. The event will last from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and include a VIP meet-and-greet and workshops on caring for community cats and kittens. Tickets are available on the Humane Society’s website starting at $30, which will benefit the Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County.
“Hannah’s work has inspired a generation of animal advocates, and this event gives our community the chance to learn directly from her, one of the most influential and impactful voices in feline welfare,” Humane Society spokesperson Lauren Green said in a news release.
Shaw said she has been interested in animal advocacy since she was young but didn’t officially adopt the cause until she found a kitten stuck in a tree as a young adult. She took in the kitten, and she said that experience opened her eyes to their plight in the United States.
“[I] realized very quickly that the kitten actually did not have it as good as I or anybody else in the public would have thought,” she said. “I learned that back then, which was 17 years ago, pretty much every shelter in the United States did not have any resources to care for them, and so kittens under eight weeks old were largely euthanized upon intake.”
That experience led her to jump into building resources to help save kittens from euthanasia. She started drafting booklets and videos showing people how to foster cats or take care of a kitten they find outdoors. Today, Shaw has over 4 million followers across her social-media platforms and regularly posts information for her followers about how to take care of kittens and cats.
“It just blew up because people were looking for this information, and it wasn’t there,” she said.
