Great Dane cares for puppies, cockatoo in the will, adopted pets, and the Kitten Lady gets hitched.
And finally: Calico Bouquet
YouTube’s popular Kitten Lady married her cat-loving fiance in an outdoor ceremony that included a surprise for the groom. Readers A9 and Karen F. shared this video and article in the New York Times (paywall).
I’ve been at work for almost an hour and a half because my computer appears to have died waiting for the help desk to show up. They’re taking their sweet time and I’m about to scream. I do not have time for this. But adopted pets are cute. Videos will have wait.
Update: computer is indeed pining for the fjords. Doing what I can on my coworker’s tiny laptop where I am missing several things. So that’s fun.
Oh dear. Sounds like its an ex-computer.
Speaking of which, check out the cockatoo video. Sweet thing tried to nest on her mommy’s pregnant belly like it was her baby.
The Times article about the kitten calico bouquet is behind a paywall but thank goodness the video isn’t, so cute!!
Love how their center pieces were edible and intended to be shared with the sanctuary animals.
That whole wedding was just fantastic. I almost cried over the calico bouquet.
So many good feels to start of the week! Etta and her babies. Emma and her amazing dedicated people. All the adoptable animal pics. I have a NY Times subscribption so I’ll see if I can cut and paste the whole article for everyone. Very lovely story of the two of them. And if I read it right, the Kitten Lady lives in my city!!!
When ‘the Kitten Lady’ Met ‘the Cat Photographer’ (NY Times)
Hannah Shaw, a kitten educator and advocate, and Andrew Marttila, a feline photographer, are a “meow” made in heaven.
Over the past decade, Hannah René Shaw has become a prominent educator on and advocate for kittens nationally and globally. She’s known as the “Kitten Lady,” and her 1.2 million Instagram followers look to her for advice on things like what to do if you find a stray cat, or how to get a baby kitten to eat.
But they also follow her for the barrage of high-quality kitten photos featured on her account, some of them shot by Andrew Jared Marttila, who is known as the “Cat Photographer.” The love in the photographs is palpable — after all, this is a story of how the kitten lady and the cat photographer fell in love.
Back in 2016, Ms. Shaw, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from George Mason University, wasn’t looking for a partner. “I was 28, and I was very much not interested in getting into a committed relationship at that moment in life,” she said.
She was getting her nonprofit organization Orphan Kitten Club off the ground and working professionally with cat rescue organizations, helping them create programs dedicated to the most vulnerable cats: orphaned neonatal kittens, known as “bottle babies,” because without a mother, they must rely on being fed by a bottle to survive.
Someone she met through her work suggested that she follow a photographer on Instagram called @iamthecatphotographer, who, yes, specialized in photographing cats. Ms. Shaw was intrigued. “I was like, that sounds weird — how can someone be a professional cat photographer?” She forgot about the suggestion until, thanks to their overlapping worlds, the cat photographer showed up on her Instagram feed anyway.
“There was a photo on his page of him in an ugly Christmas sweater with his cat in a Santa hat, posed like a cheesy 1980s Sears family portrait,” she recalled. “It made me laugh so hard, and also I was like, wait, this guy is really cute.”
Ms. Shaw founded a nonprofit organization called the Orphan Kitten Club.Credit…Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times
Ms. Shaw presented Mr. Marttila with a basket of calico kittens, their new foster pets.Credit…Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times
Mr. Marttila, 37, was living in Philadelphia; Ms. Shaw, 35, was in Washington. She sent him a message, asking if he would be willing to come to Washington to take photos of some of her foster kittens. She offered him lodging in her guest room.
“At the time I would have said it was just professional,” Ms. Shaw said.
“… But I knew what it was,” added Mr. Marttila.
On April 2, 2016, they met in Washington for dinner at Busboys and Poets. Ms. Shaw figured at best there might be a fling: She didn’t have time for much else, and had a date with someone else planned for the following weekend. “I thought, OK, this is a cool guy to know,” she said. “We’ll take some photos, maybe we’ll make out, then he’ll go home and I’ll go on my date next weekend.”
Instead, they connected over their obvious love of animals, but also on issues that had nothing to do with kittens. Ms. Shaw was impressed by what she describes as Mr. Marttila’s “serious depth.”
“It was something I understood right away and now I have seven years of evidence,” she said. “He is a self-reflective person who has done a lot of work to grow and become this stable, introspective person who is a really good partner.”
They couldn’t stop talking, so Mr. Marttila stayed the weekend. He said he wished she didn’t have a date planned for the following weekend, because he wanted to invite her to an event he thought she would be the perfect plus-one for: a red-carpet movie premiere for Jordan Peele’s comedy film “Keanu,” about a kitten kidnapped by gangsters. Some live, adoptable cats would be walking the red carpet with gold chains on, and Mr. Marttila had been hired to shoot the scene.
Ms. Shaw wondered aloud if she should cancel her date so that she could attend, and settled on flipping a coin in order to decide. The coin said to cancel, and so for their second date, they met Mr. Peele.
When Ms. Shaw happened upon a post about a cat on Mr. Marttila’s Instagram, “It made me laugh so hard, and also I was like, wait, this guy is really cute,” she said.
Mr. Marttila had found his way to feline photography almost accidentally. In 2011, while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience at Temple University, he started taking photos of his new cat and posting them on Instagram. As the number of people liking his photos increased, he expanded to photographing other pets to supplement his income.
“When I graduated I said, ‘OK, I am going to try to do this for a year, and if I am broke then I will go to grad school,’” Mr. Marttila said. Instead, in 2015, he landed his first book deal, for “Shop Cats of New York.” He met Ms. Shaw a few months before the book published by Harper Design.
The two quickly found synergy in their love for cats and began inspiring each other’s work. “When I met Andrew I was thinking I wish I could just focus on writing a book about kitten welfare, and then Andrew had a book coming out and it was so cool to see another young person really doing these things,” Ms. Shaw said. “I was looking at getting another job, but Andrew was the one who said to me, ‘Just try for three months.’”
She said having someone believe in her enough to say “just try” shifted her perspective. “I already had this passion for something that there was no job for, and so that made me go and create it myself.” Mr. Marttila said that Ms. Shaw renewed his passion for animals as well, and that her hustle inspired him to amp up his own work ethic. They say they are each other’s “hype person.”
After 10 months of dating long-distance, Ms. Shaw told Mr. Marttila that if he wanted their relationship to continue, he would have to move to Washington. “So I rented a U-Haul on Valentine’s Day 2017 and moved in,” Mr. Marttila said.
“Andrew told me when we met that his dream was to be a stay-at-home cat dad,” Ms. Shaw said. “And I was like, I have a lot of dreams in life, so I think I can make that happen.”
Ok, even their first date was kitten related? Awww.
A match made in heaven. These two will save so many feline lives.
Etta is too much.
Poor thing doesn’t seem to notice her lack of feet and she’s so careful with those puppies.
Etta is a wonderful creature, overcoming her disabilities to love and nurture hurt puppies
Finally got to meet Etta and Emma. Such amazing creatures–so smart and loving. I’m glad they have the perfect families.