Cats of the World | Hannah Shaw & Andrew Marttila
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Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Lauren, bringing you this episode with award-winning kitten rescuer Hannah Shaw and professional cat photographer Andrew Martella. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. You can watch every episode at youtube.com slash talks at google.

Hannah and Andrew are both cat experts in their own specialties. Hannah is a New York Times bestselling author of over 10 books and the founder of Orphan Kitten Club, a nonprofit focused on saving the lives of neonatal kittens. Andrew is a professional animal photographer who specializes in cats. He's been featured on the cover of National Geographic and on Good Morning America, and has also authored several books.

They join Google to discuss their book, Cats of the World, where they explore cat culture and welfare around the globe, documenting their travels with photos and stories from 30 different countries. Here is a conversation with Hannah Shaw and Andrew Martella, Cats of the World. Thanks to both of you for joining us today on Talks at Google.

Thanks so much for having us. This is so fun. Andrew, when you connected with Hannah eight years ago, you told her it was your dream to be a stay-at-home cat dad. Is traveling to 100 cities around the globe what you had in mind when you told her that? Yeah, not technically, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I think Hannah does a lot of talks all across the country and

And it's very important that someone stays home and takes care of all the animals while she's away. So I still fulfill that role, but no, I'm a world traveler, baby.

I love it. I was wondering that actually, like as I'm reading the book, I think later you talk about your cats that are in the book, but I'm like, who's taking care of all the cats while they're out there like globetrotting? That is so cool. I'm glad that you did. My wife, daughter, and I belong to a 15-year-old Siamese named Button who's a rescue. And all four of us really enjoyed Cats of the World and we can't wait to

have it on our coffee table proudly displayed. So I'm super excited to talk to you about it. You know, I think the book is a special example of how the two of you complement each other. You've been collaborating for years now. And I wonder if you could take us back to those early days reflecting on what you've learned from each other and how you've grown as a team.

Oh my gosh, I love that question. Well, when I met Andrew, I was already years and years into being a kitten rescuer, doing some of my humane education and advocacy work. But I remember that Andrew, when I met him, he had his first book, Shopcats of New York, coming out. And I was like,

What's that like to do a book? I've never like thought that I could do a book. And here's this person who got to really do it. And he encouraged me so much when we first met. And he like only through kind of learning from him about how the literary world works, was I able to take some of my fantasies.

foundational concepts I was working on through talks I was giving and things like that and turn it into my first book. So I think that we've complimented each other quite a lot. Andrew, I don't know if you want to talk about kind of, I don't know, the way that I've whipped you into this whole cat rescue frenzy. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So I had been taking photos of cats for many years before I met Hannah. And it was not just cats, but we have a lot of things in common, like our worldviews, our morals, all that stuff.

Cats were just kind of like the cherry on top. But when we got together, I had been really involved in taking photos of cats, but not so much on the other side of it, which is really needed. It's just the animal welfare aspect of that. I had taken photos at shelters, but had never fostered or anything like that.

Anything like that. And Hannah, that's her bread and butter. That is what she does day in, day out. She misses sleep almost every single day in order to take care of kittens. So she taught me a lot. My work ethic is very different than it used to be because she's a very hard worker. But she gives so much also and is really...

inspiring to be in collaboration with. She's my wife now, but she has really inspired me to be a better person. Oh, thanks, Andrew. Yeah, that's so cool. No, you can really tell that you complement each other both really well as both partners and as animal advocates. So I know that's a lot of work, though. And Hannah, you write in the book to decompress from the constant demands of animal rescue and creative work.

as well, we've always loved to travel together. And the idea for the book came as you were meeting cats at a meat market in Malaysia. So I wonder what you can share about that trip and how the project evolved over time.

Yeah. So we would kind of say like, okay, we're going to travel to like get away from all this cat work, give ourselves a break. And then we would travel and end up wanting to just be around cats wherever we would go. Because, you know, I think a part of traveling is you become naturally curious about like, you know, if you are into architecture, you travel and you go, I want to learn about the architecture here. Like, what is, what is this building? Like, how can I learn about this?

The same thing goes for us. I mean, when we would travel, we would want to meet the people who are doing cat welfare work. And we kind of naturally found ourselves drawn towards spaces with cats. And of course, with Andrew always having his camera with him, we were capturing a lot of that. I think the idea for the book really was born out of wanting to share what we were seeing and what we were learning because it was so eye-opening for me. You know, I...

I'm an American cat rescuer. I know the American shelter system very well. I know the way that we do things here. But other communities face really different issues. There's this intersection of kind of the culture and the history and the climate even that all of that kind of intersects to have different impacts on people and on cats.

And that means that the way that cat welfare looks and the solutions for cat welfare look different around the world. I found that super inspiring and thought it was such a cool idea for a book. And you're right. It was, we were in Malaysia and I remember we just, I sat down on the ground and was like, I need to write right now. Like I need to start taking notes right now. And I think Andrew was like, aren't we supposed to go for a hike? And I was like,

I need a minute. And I started just writing because I was, I felt so inspired by how kind of there's all these differences in the ways that we care for animals. But then there's this kind of singular thread that goes through everywhere we go, which is no matter where you are in the world, there is somebody there helping cats. There's somebody showing compassion to cats. And that's how the project was born.

And so it sounds like it was very organic at first, you know, Andrew, you're taking photos, Hannah, you're kind of writing down thoughts. Did it did the idea kind of come in that moment? Or did it did it change from what you thought it would be originally?

Yeah, I think that we had about six countries already that we had visited and captured these photos and some of the stories and, you know, built relationships with other cat advocates. When we pitched the book to our publisher and kind of said, like, here's what we think it is, them saying yes allowed us to kind of blow this out of the water and go like, okay, like,

what can we do if we can visit, like, if we can visit every continent on earth that has cats, uh, and really like do justice to this project, like, what do we want to show? And so I think the way that it changed over time was, um, in the beginning we were just kind of spectators, right. And, uh,

naturally we ended up wanting to not just like immerse ourselves through volunteering and things like that, but really to center the people in that community who are doing the work. So my writing ended up being very like interview heavy because I think nobody can speak to their community better than somebody who lives there, who's doing that work. So I think that that was like a big challenge.

kind of transformation as the work evolved was finding those local people, building relationship with them, supporting them how we can, kind of like immersing ourselves enough that I felt I had a good enough understanding to do justice through writing and then really like giving the opportunity to center their voices in the book.

Well, people have to buy it. So I don't want to give away too many of those stories. I would like to talk about one or two. But maybe before we do that, Andrew, I'd like to hear from you, you know,

I feel like your work is really timeless in how it draws out the natural beauty of the surroundings, the people and cats that you see from behind the camera. That one shot of Oreo behind the, or in front of the Annapurna mountains was just breathtaking. Thank you. I've heard you describe cats as really uninhibited and just unapologetically themselves at all times. Yeah.

While traveling, I'd love to hear, like, how did you get their attention, number one? But then number two, how did you draw out their unique individual personalities? Sure. So, you know, this project was very difficult. By far the most...

challenging project of my career, probably Hannah's also. It is, I don't know if you have cats, but probably some of the viewers have cats and they know the difficulties inherent to trying to take a picture of your cat. I think one of the things that we did really well is we primarily like we love cats. So we understand cat behavior and cat psychology. And we, I don't want to say we leverage that,

in order to fast track a relationship with these cats. So in many instances, you know, the cat may be standoffish and then we present handfuls of treats or food or just, you know, a soft voice and they approach us because they understand that we're not there to hurt them. We're an ally. So throughout this book, we probably went through like 200 pounds of treats and

and toys and catnip and all that kind of stuff in order to unlock their personality. Because I find that when cats are comfortable, that's when they're the most uninhibited. That's when they can really show who they are. And so virtually every picture in this book is of a cat who is comfortable being around us and showing us who they are. And then being able to capture that was just...

It was a remarkable project, yeah. Yeah, and just the way that you got the settings too. You feel like you're getting to know them as individuals, but also the context in which they exist. Yeah, I think a lot of that is what you don't see off camera. So you see the cat in frame. You don't see Hannah with her hand with treats, luring them, directing them a little bit, whatever.

So yeah, we definitely employed so many different strategies. But I think, like I said, primarily, like we love cats. We know cats. We know what works with them. We take photos. I take photos of them every day. Hannah takes photos of them. You know, we have so many here at all times. We just, we're cat people. And so cats gravitate to that.

I think too, like as a person who was kind of crafting the story, I would be like pre-planning some of what I thought would happen. But then I would in the moment be like, oh, like this is the story I want to write. So I would know like the photo that I hoped to get because I'm like, if we get this photo, it's going to make it easier for me to tell this story. Right. So I think Andrew did a great job with the photos of kind of like

easing the cat into whatever we were doing and, and, um, like being patient with them. But then once that rapport is built, if we can like scoot them a little bit to the right so that we get like the amazing castle behind them or whatever it is, then we were able to get that. So some of the shots, they look like, how could you, how did you get this cat in this exact

space, but it was sometimes like a, quite a process, um, trust building and yeah, a little bit of bribery. Kibble's helped with that. I would imagine. Um, yeah, I know the settings are incredible. You know, I'm thinking about how in Istanbul readers meet a mama cat and her babies that are, uh, making their home behind some prayer mat, uh, prayer mats at a mosque.

And then in London, you meet Hodge, who's resting on the bishop's throne at one of the oldest cathedrals in London. Pretty cool. You befriended cats and caretakers who represent diverse faith traditions, geographies, and cultures. Through that experience, what did you discover that all of us and all of these cats share in common? Yeah, I love that question. I think that

You know, we might have very different languages, different cultures, different beliefs, different histories. But every single community has some way that they're showing compassion to cats. And I think like sometimes it even.

like the love of cats transcends language. We had full like conversations that were not verbal with people, you know, where we're just like pointing to pictures of cats or like we have cat tattoos. I was like pointing to my hand of my cat tattoo to a woman in France who spoke like almost no English and I speak almost no French. And, but we're like, we love each other and the love is there. We're giving each other hugs going like, we do the same thing. Like we're, we're ultimately very similar, even if

we're different in the ways that we are. So I think like, that's kind of a side quest of this book is to help people understand that, like, even if someone maybe speaks a different language from you, they maybe look different than you, they have different beliefs than you, like, we're all ultimately, we have the same core, right? That compassion transcends everything. And I hope that that I hope that comes through in the stories that we tell in this book.

Oh, it absolutely does. I mean, I think about the one where you spent time, I can't remember her name, but with a woman in Greece and you're enjoying tea together. And at the end, I think she uses, you know, Google Translate and she says, you know, thank you for loving animals. Just a really touching moment. She made me cry. She made me cry because we both miss our grandmas so much. Our grandmas have passed away and we didn't plan to be in this like,

really motherly type woman's home. It just happened that we were taking photos in Lefkies Village on the island of Paros in the Greek islands. And somebody said, oh, you need to meet Mrs. Kaparu. She's this like 90 year old woman who lives at the top of this mountain overlooking the village of Lefkies. And she's like the grandmother of cats.

And we she not only did she like invite us to take photos of her cats, but she was like making us little plates of like the cherry tomatoes she grows in her garden, making us coffee and sitting. And we we like sat with coffee and just looked at each other and just like Andrew took photos and I just held her hand and made us we both left like in tears. It was so profound because, yeah, we share we share connection even if we don't share language.

That's so special. You know, family members and I have rescued cats my whole life at different periods. Nonetheless, as someone that's relatively unfamiliar with animal advocacy, cat advocacy in general, I learned a whole lot from your book about how each country's history, culture, economics, and natural environment, climate, affects our feline friends.

How did this project change your own perspective on animal advocacy as folks who are really experienced in this space? - I think the biggest take home for me, I do a lot of work with animal shelters in the United States and I think

in the U S we have the most robust shelter system in the world. You know, we have over 4,000 brick and mortar animal shelters in the United States. Um, and so that can feel like, Oh, we must have it all going on. Right. We got it all right here. Um, when actually a lot of communities that have fewer like municipal resources, uh, to, you know, impound animals into cages, um, they actually have a

much higher rates of community empowerment to take care of animals. So like, you know, for instance, you take a place like Lamu Island in Kenya. I mean, it is like a tiny remote island and they have one vet clinic and there's no animal shelter. But the community members who live in Lamu, it's a fishing island. They take care of the cats there. And these caring advocates just

just a couple people from this vet clinic, they go out there. There's not even cars in Lamu Island. They have no cars. They travel by donkey and by foot. And they are going out there with a rolling cart and taking cats from the community who need to be sterilized, bringing them in and doing that. And so I think the

The way that people care for community animals in areas where there's it's maybe like less easy to just say, like, not my problem. Put them in an animal shelter. Right. Like in America, it's like almost too easy to just say like, oh, this cat's on my lawn, like bring them to the animal shelter.

That actually isn't the best thing for cats. What's the best thing for cats is when we realize we're in community with animals all around the world, we're in community with cats. And I think like, I guess my takeaway coming home is, um,

to empower people who are part of the community to like be a part of the solution for them. Maybe that's that you're taking your neighborhood cats to get sterilized. Maybe that's that you're caring for animals in your, in your neighborhood, you know? But like, I think we have a little bit of an over-reliance on institutionalization in America that has unfortunately led to pretty high rates of euthanasia here. So there's different ways of doing things. And I think we can learn a lot from that.

Yeah, no, I think about how you write that, you know, folks see cats as autonomous communities in these countries, right? And it's almost like we are a community living alongside of them. And we're all a community together. I wonder how, you know, what are some practical ways that you think we in the United States can, you know, start to action some of those lessons learned and, and make a difference in in our own municipalities in our own communities?

Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest thing is just like transforming the way we think about animal shelters. Like an animal shelter is not just like a facility that should receive and provide

deal with animals, whether that's through adoption or euthanasia. I really like when people think of a shelter as like a resource where if you find a kitten outside, for instance, you know, you don't have to bring that kitten to the shelter and leave them there. You can go to the shelter and say like, you know, can you help me with the spay and neuter for this animal? I'm willing to foster. Can you help me with supplies? Things like that. I think that when we kind of

what we can give. Maybe we can't all give the same thing, but fostering is certainly a really, really big way that we can have more empowerment as community members. And then, yeah, I think the other is just like, it's okay that we live in community with cats. You know, we don't, every cat is not a problem. They're not a pest.

We don't need to institutionalize and euthanize cats just for existing. Right. You know, there are other ways to manage that. And certainly sterilization and trap neuter return is a huge one. It's globally very effective. You know, it was interesting going to places like in India. There's like a history of so many community dogs.

They share a lot of community with dogs on the street. And because that can be perceived as more of like a public safety issue, the governments of India,

have put a lot of funding into sterilizing community dog populations rather than euthanizing them. So you see like all over Delhi, you see these like dogs that are sterilized that live in the community. And now advocates there are taking those same lessons and applying them to cats. And it's just a really beautiful, like different way of doing it. But you see the impact. I mean, the impact is huge. Like, especially like we went to Mumbai, they're a little bit further ahead on like

having this really, really big impact in their community, you don't really see as many community dogs there. And you see tons of the cats who are in the community now are sterilized. And that's because of individual community members, like, you know, without the help of their local shelter, like they're just going out and making a difference. It's really cool. And

Andrew, I know you've said that you've learned so much about animal advocacy on this dream team, right, that you and Hannah have. And I also know you've talked about how photography is a big part of helping cats live better lives in any of these contexts, just so that folks can get to know them and meet them. And I wonder if you felt...

the same way about the people that you met that are doing this work in other countries? How did you go about kind of getting to know them and capture some of these, these great moments that we see in cats of the world? Yeah, absolutely. I think when you put a, a real face, whether it be a cat or a human in front of the audience, you can connect so much more readily with that person or that animal. And it's,

Being able to showcase people who might not have the internet or might not have had any visibility, especially on a global scale, like we're able to highlight these people on our social media. It really does make a difference to them. It really empowers them. And they don't feel alone because in some of these small villages, they might be the only one doing this work. When we come and we say, thank you so much for everything you're doing.

We want to highlight what your great efforts are. We want to see if there's any way we can do a GoFundMe or fundraise, help you, but also just showcase the good work that you're doing because maybe you've never been recognized for this before. And

It is profound, the response that we've gotten when I show the photos in real time of the people. Maybe they've never seen what they look like doing their work. So I think it's been remarkable not just to capture the cats, but also the people who are doing all this great work.

I love that. There's one story in particular that stands out to me, and it's about Armando Martinez in Mexico. And so he's the director of Los Cabos Humane Society. And Andrew captured Armando against this bright backdrop with perches and towers and ladders for cats. And he explains that the walls...

the built-in cubbies in the walls used to help hold kennels where cats would wait until they were euthanized. And, oh, we got a buddy. This is awesome. Yes. Sorry. Is this Haroon? This is Haroon. Okay. I heard him coming. I heard him coming. I heard the meow. I said, oh, he's going to pop up. I can put him down. You want to come to my lab? Come here, buddy. Okay.

We'll just hang out here. Yeah, I'll just circle back. But yeah, Armando talks about how there's this space with cubbies and the cubbies used to hold kennels where cats would await euthanization. And he's taken that space and made it this really bright, beautiful place where cats can play. They have towers to perch on ladders to climb. Yeah.

And Hannah, you captured this great quote. He says, we just have to change the mindset. This area is not for sacrificing. It's for playing. Oh, my gosh. I have goosebumps just hearing it again because talking with Armando was so profound for me. He came in and he kind of just said, like, the way we've been doing this, we're not going to do it anymore. And like, yeah.

And everybody told him, like, I don't know, we've done it this way forever. You know, they were taking in cats and euthanizing them. And he said, no, we're going to change this room and we're going to we're going to do things differently. And you would never know. I mean, this room, this cat room they have at Los Cabos Humane Society is like so beautiful. It looks like a big catio with all this enrichment. And yeah, here I would hang out there.

Yeah. Hearing him tell what that room used to be. It's like you can see the profound impact that one person who just thinks a little bit differently, who just sees a potential future there just through that belief that things can be better. Like he made that happen. And I love that photo of him. He's like holding a cat and kind of looking off into the distance. And I was like, he's got my vote. I love that guy. He's awesome. Yeah.

Yeah, such a cool story. Yeah, gave me goosebumps too. And then, you know, I think a little bit earlier, but in your chapter on Puerto Rico, there's another advocate, Irma Podesta, I believe is her name. And she says, everyone can be a rescuer. You just have to act when a cat needs you.

So I wonder if you can both share, whether we're at home or abroad, folks who like to travel as well, what are some things that we can all be doing to act to make a difference? Yeah, I think one of the simplest ways, if you are traveling...

If you know exactly where you're going, you can reach out to rescue groups at the destination and see, are there any supplies that you need that I could bring you? Because sometimes it's just a question of not being able to get certain products. And then on the way back,

It is quite simple in many countries to be able to bring a cat back to the United States where they might have a better outcome. So in Puerto Rico, for instance, it is part of America, but we brought back four cats from Cevagato. And we've done that with a couple of other countries. And yeah, it's just a very easy way to get involved at that destination. Yeah, I love that, Andrew. I think like...

People, when they're traveling or when you're at home, you have to remember if you have love for cats, first of all, you can take that love out of your heart and put it into your hands and do something with it, whether that's through fostering or through donating or even if it's through just promoting the work that other people are doing. But in your community and in any community you visit, there's somebody who will benefit from you reaching out and saying, how can I help?

you know, that's what we did. We reached out in the pre-planning for all of these and we would say like, what can we bring you? Can we bring you kitten formula? You know, a remote island probably doesn't have kitten formula and can we bring that for them? Sometimes it's like you can even volunteer while traveling. We were in, we volunteered in many places, Puerto Rico, like you say, I mean, we, on the island of Vieques, we volunteered with a spay and neuter effort and that's like,

it's a really cool way to travel and do something a little bit different. You're not just like doing the regular tourist stuff. You can go there and actually like engage with people in that community, learn something new,

that you would never learn just as a tourist. We were like out trapping cats with humane traps, like late into the night. And I think I write about in the Puerto Rico chapter, like just the sounds of the coqui frogs, which like are, it's like this really beautiful sound.

that you would only hear if you were out at two in the morning, trapping cats on the Island of Vieques and like getting to have that experience. It's, it is like fulfilling for you, but it's a way to like give back to the community that you're working in and that you're visiting and understand something about where you're traveling. So there's lots of different ways to help animals, both abroad and certainly in your community, just like reach out and find out who's doing work and how you can help them.

Oh, well, we could go on. This book is dense with wonderful stories, vivid photos. I hope everyone will pick up their own copies of Cats of the World wherever books are sold. But now, Hannah, Andrew, before we go, what's one place you would like to visit next that we didn't hear about in the book or that you didn't get to visit?

Oh, we have so many places that we would love to visit, honestly. Dream destinations. I mean, I...

You know what I loved was I loved the Balkan states that we visited. And I'd love to spend more time in that part of the world. When you travel, you learn about other places. We traveled to Croatia or Montenegro and people go, you're not going to Albania? Albania is the most beautiful country in the world. I'm like, I didn't know that. And they're like,

well, you're an idiot. If you come all the way here, you don't go to Albania or you didn't go to Romania. Like they have the most beautiful castles in the world. And I'm like, I didn't know that. We got to come back. So I'm really interested in that part of the world for sure. There's so many places we'd like to go and so many stories we wish we could have told. You know, it's page limits are my enemy. I would have loved for this to be a 4,000 page book, but I don't think anybody would probably buy a 4,000 page book. Wow.

Wow. Next, cats of the rest of the world, right? Yeah. Andrew, what about you? Where would you like to go next, Andrew?

I still want to go to Taiwan. There is apparently a cat village in Taiwan. And who knows if it's really populated by all the cats that it looks like on the internet. But I know that if this happened many times during our project, this book, we'd go to a place and it was not at all what we thought it was going to be. But we invariably find something else that's, you know,

to that that may have been way cooler than the initial thing that we attempted to go to. But yeah, Taiwan. Also, I don't know if she's still the president of Taiwan, but at the time we were planning this book, the president of Taiwan was a huge cat lady. And I think her cats had social media. And I was like,

we got to go there. We got to like make this work. But it, unfortunately with like some of the pandemic restrictions, it was like not possible for us to go there. So that's definitely on the bucket list for the future.

Amazing. Next time. Well, Andrew, Hannah, thank you for joining us today. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you for the work that you do for cats and then for the communities that they live in. We appreciate you. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you. Really appreciate this opportunity. Thanks for listening. You can watch this episode and tons of other great content at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Talk soon.