Woman Finds A Kitten In A Tree And Then, Weeks Later, Finds Two More

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December 22, 2017

It is sad how some people treat animals. Hannah Shaw never considered herself a cat person until one day when she was walking down the street of her hometown of Philadelphia; she looked up and saw a tiny little kitten in the tree. She said, “I climbed the tree and got her down, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what do I do now?'"

Hannah named the kitten Coco, who was just a couple of weeks old and needed round-the-clock care. “I used to work in the public schools in Philadelphia,” said Hannah. “I was so dedicated to this kitten that I would sneak him into school with me because he needed to eat every couple of hours. I would actually wear a scarf around my neck and I would keep the kitten in my scarf, and I’d just excuse myself every once in awhile to go to the teachers’ lounge, and I would feed him in there, or feed him in a bathroom stall.”

When the school found out that she was bringing the kitten to school, they were beyond supportive. “I was able to have [Coco] kind of join the classroom a little bit, and he learned how to walk on the floor of the classroom I was working in,” Hannah says. “He went everywhere with us - even field trips. I was bottle-feeding him outside of this museum, and I have a picture of him with a giant milk mustache.”

Just two weeks after finding Coco, Hannah spotted a cat, later named Rufus, in a tree. A month after that, she found Zeke, who was even younger and smaller than Coco and Rufus. After finding all these kittens in trees, Hannah started a non-profit to help other kittens in similar situations.

According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), there are 7.6 million animals that enter shelters each year, 3.4 million of which are cats. According to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), 70% of the cats in shelters are euthanized each year. Newborn kittens are more likely to be euthanized because they require more resources to take care of them.