As the busiest time of year for cat shelters gets under way, US kitten rescuer Hannah Shaw has added her voice to a call for more foster carers in Tasmania.
Shaw, known as the Kitten Lady, visited Hobart’s Ten Lives Cat Centre on Wednesday to promote fostering during kitten season, which she said was “really starting to ramp up right now in Tasmania”.
“Kitten season sounds super cute, but it actually is not very cute for shelters and for kittens unless they have the right kind of support,” she said.
The professional kitten rescuer, humane educator and author has amassed a social media following of more than four million people.
Rescues, shelters and foster parents across the globe use her library of educational videos about kitten care as a training resource.
Shaw said shelters were starting to fill with kittens that needed a lot of love and sometimes around-the-clock care, which was best done in a foster home.
Fostering could take as little as a couple of weeks, she said.
“A kitten like Rowan might need just a handful of weeks, maybe in your bathroom or in a little playpen in the corner,” Shaw said, referring to a kitten at the centre.
“It’s really something anybody can do to be a kind-hearted person for the cats in their community and it makes all the difference in helping them get adopted.”
Ten Lives chief executive Noel Hunt said the number of cats coming in had already jumped.
“Last week we took in 50 cats – the week before it was 9 cats,” he said.
“When kitten season starts it’s a rapid jump in numbers and it is unrelenting intake from then onwards to June next year.”
The charity has 145 carers and Hunt said it needed another 100 as the breeding season gained momentum. Fostering covers both kittens and adult cats and Ten Lives has said carers receive training, food, supplies, medication and veterinary care.
Shaw, who has worked with cats in more than 30 countries, came to Australia to speak at the Cat Lovers Festival. She said she had heard Tasmania had the highest density of cat adoptions in the country.
“I do think that there is a person for every cat and a cat for every person,” she said.
Applications to foster are open through the Ten Lives website.
