By LEANNE ITALIE, AP Lifestyles Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Strawberry, Blueberry, JoJo and Mazzy were about 6 weeks old when animal rescuers coaxed them out of long metal pipes in the parking lot of a storage unit company. Meatball was a single kitten living in a cold garage with a group of semi-feral adult cats.

Spaghetti, Macaroni and Rigatoni, meanwhile, were just 2 weeks old when the good folks of LIC Feral Feeders, a cat rescue in Queens, took them in and bottle-fed them until they were strong enough to survive.

Consider these cuties the face of kitten season 2025.

Kitten season, typically landing during warmer months, is the time of year when most cats give birth. That produces a surge of kittens, often fragile neonates. Shelters get overwhelmed, especially when it comes to the 24-hour care and feeding of extremely young kittens.

That, as a result, triggers a need for more foster homes because many of the 4,000 or so shelters in the U.S. don’t have the time or resources for around-the-clock care, said Hannah Shaw, an animal welfare advocate known as the Kitten Lady with more than a million followers on Instagram.

“We see about 1.5 million kittens entering shelters every year. And most of them will come into shelters during May and June,” she said. “Shelters need all hands on deck to help out through fostering.”

Familiarity with fostering animals is high, Shaw said. The act of doing it is a different story. There’s a false perception, she said, that the expense of fostering animals falls on the people who step up to do it. These days, many shelters and rescues cover the food, supplies and medical costs of fostering.

“A lot of people don’t foster because they think it’s going to be this huge cost, but fostering actually only costs you time and love,” she said.

Lisa Restine, a Hill’s Pet Nutrition veterinarian, said people looking to adopt kittens should take pairs since cats often bond early in life. And how many cats is too many cats per household?

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“This is nothing serious or medical but my general rule of thumb is the number of adults in the house, like a 2-to-1 ratio, because you can carry one cat in each hand, so if there are two adults you can have four cats and still be sane,” she said.

Square footage to avoid territory disputes is a good rule of thumb when planning for cats, Restine said. Two cats per 800 square feet then 200 square feet more for each addition should help, she said.

Littermates, like Macaroni and Rigatoni, are much more likely to bond, Restine said. Kittens not biologically related but raised together often bond as well — like Meatball and Spaghetti. But adopters hoping to bond an adult cat with a new kitten arrival may be disappointed.

“Once they’re over that 3- or 4-month mark, it’s hard to get that true bonding,” Restine said.

Typically, kittens stay in their foster homes from a few weeks to a few months. While statistics are not kept on the number of kitten fosters that “fail” — when foster families decided to keep their charges — some shelters report rates as high as 90%. That’s a win, despite use of the word “fail,” advocates note.

Shaw sees another barrier holding people back from fostering: the notion that it requires special training or skills. That’s why she has dedicated her life to educating the public, offering videos, books and research on how it works at her site kittenlady.org.

Companies are coming on board, too. Hill’s, a pet food company, runs the Hill’s Food, Shelter & Love program. It has provided more than $300 million in food support to over 1,000 animal shelters that support fostering in North America.

“About a quarter of a million kittens, unfortunately, don’t survive in our shelters every year,” Shaw said. “The shelter’s going to be there to mentor and support you. So I think a lot of the fear that people have about fostering, they might find that actually it is something you totally can do. It’s just scary because you haven’t done it yet.”

By VASILISA STEPANENKO

PRYLUKY, Ukraine (AP) — At least five people, including a 1-year-old child, his mother and grandmother, were killed Thursday in a nighttime Russian drone attack on the northern Ukrainian city of Pryluky, officials said.

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Six drones hit a residential area in the city shortly before dawn, injuring nine others, according to authorities. The child killed was the grandson of the local fire chief, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

The fire chief, identified by local officials as 50-year-old Oleksandr Lebid, “arrived to respond to the aftermath right at his own home,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram. “It turned out that a Shahed drone hit his house.”

The attack came just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Trump, Putin said “very strongly” that Russia will retaliate for Ukraine’s stunning drone attacks on Russian military airfields on Sunday.

U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to stop the more than 3-year-long war have delivered no significant progress, and the grinding war of attrition has continued unabated.

Child’s mother feared drone attacks

The mother of the 1-year-old killed in Pryluky was a police officer called Daryna Shyhyda, Ukraine’s National Police said.

“Today our hearts are scorched by pain,” the police force wrote on Telegram. “This is not just a loss — it is three generations of life uprooted.”

Liudmyla Horbunova, 55, who lives across the street from where the Shahed drone hit, said Shyhyda had moved with her son last weekend to her parents’ house from her home in Kyiv because she was scared of potential Russian attacks on the capital.

“She ran away from Shaheds in Kyiv, but they found her here, in Pryluky,” Horbunova told The Associated Press.

Firefighters worked through charred debris and extinguished the remains of a fire that engulfed the home of Shyhyda’s parents, leaving only a brick carcass and scattered toys, clothes and a family photo book.

Drones struck across regions

Pryluky, which had a prewar population of around 50,000 people, lies about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Kyiv, the capital. The city is far from the front line and does not contain any known military assets.

The last time Pryluky was struck was in November last year, when a Russian missile hit an administrative building and injured one person.

Zelenskyy said a total of 103 drones and one ballistic missile targeted multiple Ukrainian regions overnight, including Donetsk, Kharkiv, Odesa, Sumy, Chernihiv, Dnipro and Kherson.

“This is another massive strike,” Zelenskyy said. “It is yet another reason to impose the strongest possible sanctions and apply pressure collectively.”

US peace effort remains stalled

Zelenskyy, who has accepted a U.S. ceasefire proposal and offered to meet with Putin in an attempt to break the stalemate in negotiations, wants more international sanctions on Russia to force it to accept a settlement. Putin has shown no willingness to meet with Zelenskyy, however, and has indicated no readiness to compromise.

Germany’s new leader Friedrich Merz was due to meet with President Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday as he works to keep the U.S. on board with Western diplomatic and military support for Ukraine.

Ukraine’s top presidential aide, Andriy Yermak, met with senior American officials in Washington on Wednesday and called for greater U.S. pressure on Russia, accusing the Kremlin of deliberately stalling ceasefire talks and blocking progress toward peace, according to a statement on the presidential website.

Yermak, who traveled to the U.S. as part of a Ukrainian delegation, met with senior American officials to bolster support for Ukraine’s defense and humanitarian priorities. He said Ukraine urgently needs stronger air defense capabilities.

More people wounded in Kharkiv

Hours later, 19 people were injured in a Russian drone strike on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Those hurt included children, a pregnant woman, and a 93-year-old woman, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote on Telegram.

At around 1:05 a.m., Shahed-type drones struck two apartment buildings in the city’s Slobidskyi district, causing fires and destroying several private vehicles.

“By launching attacks while people sleep in their homes, the enemy once again confirms its tactic of insidious terror,” Syniehubov wrote on Telegram.

Russian aircraft also dropped four powerful glide bombs on the southern city of Kherson, injuring at least three people, regional authorities said.

Russia reports another rail explosion

In Russia, an explosion damaged a railway line Thursday in the Voronezh region bordering Ukraine, Russia’s Federal Security Service said, as cited by state news agencies.

The damage forced 26 trains to stop running, Russian rail operators said.

The incident came after Putin described recent attacks on Russian railway infrastructure as “terrorist acts” by Ukrainian saboteurs. Seven people died and two trains were derailed after road and rail bridges were damaged in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk regions during the night between May 31 and June 1.

Hanna Arhirova and Illia Noviko in Kyiv, Ukraine and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England contributed.

By The Associated Press

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel has recovered the bodies of two hostages held in the Gaza Strip.

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Israeli American Gad Haggai and Judih Weinstein — who was Israeli, American and Canadian — were killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack into southern Israel that ignited the war in Gaza. Their remains were returned to Israel in a special operation by the army and the Shin Bet internal security agency, Netanyahu said.

Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages in the Oct. 7 attack. More than 54,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, have been killed in the ensuing conflict, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Here are details on the hostages:

Total hostages captured on Oct. 7, 2023: 251
Hostages taken before the Oct. 7 attack: 4, including 2 who entered Gaza in 2014 and 2015 and the bodies of 2 soldiers killed in the 2014 war
Hostages released in exchanges or other deals: 148, of whom 8 were dead
Bodies of hostages retrieved by Israeli forces: 43
Hostages rescued alive: 8
Hostages still in captivity: 56, of whom Israel believes 33 are dead. Netanyahu has said there are “doubts” about the fate of several more.
The hostages in captivity include: 5 non-Israelis (3 Thais, 1 Nepalese, 1 Tanzanian), of whom 3 (2 Thais and 1 Tanzanian) have been confirmed dead

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

By JOHN CARUCCI and MARIA SHERMAN, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — It began as it always should, with her voice.

The second solo album from Cynthia Erivo, fresh off a herculean press run with the success of the first “Wicked” film, was always meant to be “vocal-focused,” she told The Associated Press recently. It may be the understatement of a lifetime: to know her is to know her instrument — that range, the notes few else can hit but many attempt.

And Erivo’s new soulful album, the evocatively titled “I Forgive You,” hits the mark.

In the studio, that meant using her vocals “as the pads, as the stacking,” like an artist might with a guitar or piano. “The meat of each of the pieces that you listen to is the voice,” she says, “So that you can hear the lyrics, you can hear the song, you can hear the emotion in it,” she explains. The other instruments, too, were performed live. “Everything you hear in there is real and tangible.”

For that reason — and other expressions of autonomy take across the album — she says it felt like her first. For the listener, it evokes a real feeling of intimacy.

Erivo spoke to the AP about “I Forgive You,” life after “Wicked” and the forthcoming “Wicked: For Good,” and the ways in which acting, singing and writing inform one another.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

AP: The title is “I Forgive You.” What’s the significance?

ERIVO: This album is a collection of stories and songs that are both personal for things that are happening now, things that have happened in the past, and I think some of which I have had to forgive people for. And honestly, some of which I’ve had to forgive myself for. And I loved the idea of calling it this title, because it’s a simple concept, but not an easy one. And not one that we as humans are very good at, often.

A part of me was feeling, like, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people had to keep repeating the words, ‘I forgive you?’” So even if you’re finding it difficult to say this album will give you the permission to actually say the words, even if you’re not quite ready.

Cynthia Erivo poses for a portrait on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)

AP: There’s a lot of candor on the album. Like in the song “Replay.”

ERIVO: The concept of being a work in progress — who still gets scared of things, who still has to deal with things — that won’t ever necessarily stop. It might get quiet, but that feeling doesn’t necessarily always go away. I just wanted to be honest, and I think that “Replay” was probably the first song that I put out was because I felt like it was sort of a reintroduction to the inner part of me that most people might not really know.

But it’s also a tricky song in that it’s fun, it’s kind of upbeat, and if you actually listen, you hear that there’s like a person who’s a little bit fragile, a person whose trying to figure some things out, a person who’s been through some things, who’s dealt with things, who has abandonment issues, who has fear, who an inferiority complex sometimes, who wants to help everyone, who wants to save everyone, but gets it wrong.

Those are human, human things that I want to share.

AP: So, there was no apprehension in being so forthright?

ERIVO: No apprehension about writing it, a little apprehension about sharing it, because it’s honest. But once it’s done, what can you do? It’s time to share.

AP: Writing, singing, acting — how does one inform the other?

ERIVO: They feed each other. When I sing, I feel free and I feel open, which means that when I go and act — because I’ve given myself that experience — the want to close off again sort of goes away. So, when I’m on a set, I’m as open as I am when I am singing. I’m waiting to receive whatever I’m getting from my counterpart or whoever’s opposite me so I can actually listen. Because the act of writing and singing actually is also the act of listening.

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AP: You’ve long been a powerhouse in theater. “Wicked” has launched you to the heights of mainstream culture. What’s the biggest adjustment you’ve had to make?

ERIVO: I had a sort of level of anonymity that I think I got used to and I really kind of enjoyed. That isn’t necessarily there anymore, which is still really lovely because people are kind and sweet, and I’m really grateful for it. But that’s an adjustment, to realize that you can’t just walk into a store and no one will know who you are, or you can’t get on a plane, and no one will there you are. That’s a new thing that I didn’t expect or wasn’t seeking.

AP: Are you done shooting “Wicked”?

ERIVO: We have a couple pickups and then we’re done.

AP: Is there anything else you’d like to add about the album?

ERIVO: I’m so proud of it. We spent a lot of time on it. We worked really, really hard on it. There was no stone unturned on it because I love what I do, and I love music, and I loved making it.

So just know that this was made with a lot of love.