By Sarah Bohan was running at a great pace over the weekend during the Chicago Marathon. With just around five miles to go, the runner, who was participating on behalf of Team PAWS, a local animal clinic, stopped dead in her tracks.Â
During the grueling race, she saw a kitten hiding along the route and could tell it was desperate for help.Â
The Boston resident was on her way to a personal record, that is until mile 21 when she spotted a scared kitten apparently in need of some TLC.
Bohan said after it became clear that nobody else was going to help, she stopped her race along with another runner, writes CBS.
“It had to be all of one pound. (Its) fur was matted. And something just clicked and I was like ‘This is more important right now’ and I remember in the back of my mind ‘Your PR (personal record) is going to go out the window you aren’t going to make it’ and it was just an instinct. It was human instinct.”
Unsure of what to do with the kitten, Sarah Bohan said she walked about a mile with it in her arms until she found a spectator along the marathon route who agreed to take the kitten in and give it a home.
The New Barker reported that “for 482 runners on TEAM PAWS that meant fundraising. But Sarah took the group’s No Kill mission literally.
Sarah was running a personal record pace – until her instincts took over. She ended up stopping to save a scared, skinny, dirty, matted kitten under a bridge at Mile 21.Â
‘I saw this white fluffy thing scurrying under a bridge and recognized it as a dirty, scared cat that was obviously a stray separated from its mother,’ she said. ‘At that point, my personal record was out the window and I knew what I had to do.’
Sarah walked with another runner for about a mile asking spectators if they could care for this cat until they found a woman who owned cats who promised them she would. Then, Sarah and Gia ran the rest of the race together, encouraging struggling runners.”
Despite stopping to save the little guy, and carrying him the rest of the way, Sarah still finished her marathon with an unforgettable time of 3:31:35.
[Read More: Read About Nature’s Greatest Battle Happening Right Under Our Nose]
