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At the very start of 2013, my 16-year-old gray tabby, Bailey, needed to be euthanized. There is something hellish about deciding to put a beloved member of your family, your dear pet, to sleep. I was depressed for days, while my husband, a Consumer Reports junkie, researched getting a new pet. He called a breeder about a Snowshoe kitten, but I was determined to go to the shelter.

Photo: Michelle Hurrell

There, we fell in love with a tiny young black kitty. We brought her home after the shelter’s vet declined to spay her because she had a fever of unknown origin. As fate would have it, we soon found ourselves at our own vet with a very ill kitten we had named Arya.

We waited anxiously for the results of an ultrasound, and at first, things did not look good. We had already come to love Arya, who was named after the lost princess turned fighter from Game of Thrones. She was part Bombay, which was the one breed my husband had ruled out because of its needy nature. Sure enough, she constantly caused trouble whenever she felt ignored. Toy mice were gutted. Nice furniture was shredded.

Yet Arya was also a lap cat and incredibly loving. Were we going to lose her too?

We returned to the vet with heavy hearts. There were no tumors, but she was pregnant. Sadly, the babies were not thriving, and they were threatening her life. We made the difficult choices that had to be made.

Arya is now two years old. She is still attention-seeking. She sticks close when things are rough, and most people cannot say the same about their fellow humans. Like the character she was named after, Arya is everyone’s favorite. People pass the rest of us by just to pet her soft black coat and gaze into her deep green eyes.

She is not easy, but nothing of value comes easy. If something gets broken in the process, that is just par for the course. It is a price we are willing to pay. Nothing she has broken has hurt us as much as the thought of losing her.

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Story submitted by Michelle Hurrell from Sterling, VA.

This story was originally shared on The Animal Rescue Site. Share your very own rescue story here!