Kitten Lady Wants Your Help Saving All the Animals
Hannah Shaw has a million devoted Instagram followers and a new book that helps kids develop their natural compassion for animals
Hannah Shaw, also known as “Kitten Lady,” is famous among her million Instagram followers for rescuing kittens — she’s saved hundreds, many of them only days old, and shares their journeys online. But IRL, she’s an equal-opportunity animal-lover, and always has been. “I have always been an animal advocate,” she tells me on a call from San Diego, where she runs Orphan Kitten Club, a nonprofit kitten rescue launched last year. “I was involved in animal advocacy for farmed animals, animals in laboratories, and animals in entertainment for much longer than I was ever involved in anything with cats.”
Shaw, who grew up in New York City, went vegetarian at age 12 after watching a disturbing video about factory farming — at summer camp, of all places. “I went home from camp and said, ‘I’m never eating animals again,’” she recalls. “My mom said, ‘We’ll see how long that lasts,’ and that was 20 years ago.”
Shaw believed then that abstaining from meat was “the best possible thing you could do to help animals.” But a few years later she learned about veganism — specifically, the cruelties of the egg and…
