Secretly a softie? Howard and Beth Stern live in a home with six pet cats and a never-ending rotation of foster kittens. And it turns out the famous shock jock, 61, actually loves his family’s feline companions.

“Howard is the greatest,” animal activist Beth, 43, exclusively tells Us Weekly in a video. “He helps me socialize them. So every morning and every evening, he sits in the foster room. They crawl all over them. He’s been known to clean litter boxes. He’s my partner in all of this.”

And Howard isn’t the only one looking out for the foster kittens. Beth’s cat Yoda, a fluffy white Persian she rescued, had an experience with the little ones that inspired her children’s book, Yoda: The Story of a Cat and His Kittens.

Yoda always sleeps with one eye open to keep an eye on his foster kittens ? #yodathestoryofacatandhiskittens A photo posted by Beth Stern (@bethostern) on Nov 16, 2015 at 4:59am PST

“The strangest thing one of my cats has ever done is [to] go from a failing heart to a healthy heart,” Beth tells Us of her beloved kitty, who was diagnosed with a heart problem not long after she adopted him from the North Shore Animal League, the no-kill rescue group she serves as a spokesperson for. “Yoda took over the foster room and started taking care of the kittens and came to life again. He no longer has anything wrong with his heart.”

The sequel to Beth’s book, Yoda Gets a Buddy, hits stores on Dec. 1.