Tiny But Mighty Kitten Ladys Guide to Saving the Most Vulnerable Felines PDF Free Download

This is, hands down, the best book on caring for kittens in existence.

It is, in fact, the only book written at a professional level that I have come across on the subject. This is particularly astonishing in an era in which tens of thousands of books are published each year, many on oddly niche subjects (banana recipes! crocheting hyperbolic geometries! facts about cucumbers! knitting with dog hair!). We have an entire genre of books on adorable cat memes but there was, until now, nothing comprehensive on how to rescue and care for wee kittens, nor on how to prevent kitten suffering through TNR. Needless to say, this book steps in to fill a void and will save many lives.

(NB: I did not receive anything in return for this review, nor was I asked to write it. I am a completely independent reader.)

What you’ll find inside: a comprehensive look at the first weeks of a kitten’s life, with an excellent and thorough chronological overview of their developmental stages and how to recognize them, as well as information on how the care you need to provide for them changes over time, including really detailed information on the way in which feeding, health support, climate control, socialization, and other supportive care shifts and transforms practically day-by-day, and according to the circumstances and condition that the kittens were in prior to entering your home. If you’ve just found a shivering kitten under a [fill in sub-optimal, outdoor situation here], this book will tell you exactly how to proceed.

The kitten health information summarized in the book is terrific and an excellent example of what makes Tiny But Mighty so important: there is simply nowhere else to go to find it all in one place. The author’s overview and discussion of kitten illnesses is particularly valuable: she lists the most common afflictions, their causes, symptoms, &c, and gives you a good sense for prognosis and the best ways to proceed. The poop color wheel mentioned by another reviewer is practical, not to mention reminiscent of Renaissance medical practitioners’ urine color wheels (I digress).

Ms. Shaw does an excellent job of presenting and explaining concepts to the reader. The case study narratives that are woven throughout the book are not only engaging but edifying: they often convey information that can’t be captured in a list of facts. That said, many times a well-organized, easy-to-reference set of facts is *exactly* what one needs, and Tiny But Mighty is full of well-thought-out and organized tables and lists that would have been more difficult to digest from a wall of text alone. The narrative, case study, & table/list combination format is effective and mutually complementary.

Another strength is the book’s superb photography. The photos are not mere eye-candy: many convey visual information that can’t be communicated as well through words alone. It would be great if all of the photographs had captions, however. Only some do, and I was often left wondering if the photograph in question (and its feline subject(s)) corresponded to the text on that particular page.

My main wish for a second edition of the book is for a more developed section on Kitten Fading Syndrome. As Ms. Shaw points out, this is a catch-all term for a number of things, or combinations of things, that can cause a kitten’s health to quickly spiral downward, and she rightly suggests getting the kitten to a vet as soon as possible. Yet in my own experience, as well as the author’s own, many vets just don’t know what to do with a sick kitten! The photograph accompanying my review is of a kitten from our second foster litter who had KFS. When she didn’t gain weight we rushed her to a vet, whose only suggestion was to try to make her food more palatable by trying a different brand of formula, or by trying to hand-feed her wet food. (The kitten did make it and was happily adopted, despite our blundering efforts!) It would be really great to have a red-tabbed section that a panicked fosterer could turn to for an overview of the factors that *in the author’s experience* most frequently contribute to KFS situations and how to respond to them. This would be a supplement to a visit to the vet, not a replacement for the same, but it would go a long way toward answering pressing questions (“What could be happening? What should I look for and what might these signs tell me? What can I do immediately to try to improve the kitten’s chances of survival? What questions or ideas can I raise with my vet if she/he is stymied?”). Information directly relevant to these questions is of course woven throughout the book; it would be great to have it in one place, however, for the KFS kitten. This could even just consist of a bit more discussion, or the addition of another excellent table, with references to relevant sections or page numbers.

Two other small wish list items: it would be really helpful to know more about how to treat a kitten with severe anemia, since so many of them are flea-infested, and I would love to see really important information on pages of denser exposition printed in bolded font (for example, the sentence in which the author introduces the importance of heating up cold kittens deserves bolded emphasis).

These, however, are minor suggestions for a terrific first edition of a book that is certain to become a feline classic. Bravo. Highly recommend.