As a high school volunteer she prepped cats for surgery. Now she’s studying to be a vet.

Anwar Isbeih knew she liked cats. But as a teen growing up in Loxahatchee Groves, she didn’t know much more about them than that.

She would feed the dozens of kittens that seemingly spawned in her neighborhood, noting with sadness their occasional disappearances.

“They would go missing and you’d be like ‘Yeah, the coyotes got ‘em,’ ” she said.

When she volunteered to foster kittens, she learned about the world of spaying, neutering and vaccinations, and the professionals who provided those services to feral felines. She was, as she put it, “finding out there were people actually looking out for them.”

Isbeih decided she wanted to be one of those people. In 2023, the summer before her senior year in high school, she started volunteering at the Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League near West Palm Beach.

She thought the gig would entail menial tasks — “helping out with the laundry,” as she quipped.

But in short order she was thrown into surgical procedures. She found herself shaving cats’ abdomens before surgery and scrubbing them with chemical solutions to ready them for incisions.

She was still in high school yet had worked her way into a role as a veterinary technician.

“They pushed me a lot. They helped me grow,” she said. “It was really surprising. I loved working there every day. I looked forward to it every day. It was the highlight of my day.”

Isbeih would spend three days a week at the center during the school year and even more during summer breaks. All told, the Peggy Adams center says she amassed 900 volunteer hours — the equivalent of nearly a half-year of full-time work.

In that work she found her passion. Now 19, she’s an undergraduate student at the University of Florida, where she lives with human roommates and two cats, Mimo and Hopper.

Between classes, she works as a paid animal technician in Gainesville and is preparing to apply to veterinary schools. With her bachelor’s degree nearly finished, she hopes to attend UF’s veterinary school starting next fall.

As a veterinarian, she wants to specialize in cats and dogs, and she wants to work at a shelter, helping animals with no owners to support them.

“I want to focus on shelters,” she said. “It just helps animals in need, just focusing on the animals that can’t speak for themselves.”

She says that some day, maybe, she hopes she could even work as a vet at Peggy Adams, the same center that inspired her love for the profession.

Andrew Marra is a reporter at The Palm Beach Post.