08/02/2026
He was eight, at the skate park in Somerton, when he saw a group of older kids throwing something between them.
"I'd seen the older kids tossing a baby kitten around like he was a football," Zayin Berry said. "I was sad and mad because of the poor kitty."
They were bigger than him and there were several of them. He worked out fairly quickly that telling them to stop was not going to achieve anything.
So he went and got his skateboard.
He ran over and told them they could have it. They could take it and play with it, if they wanted.
They stopped, took the board, and left.
Zayin picked up what they had dropped. The kitten was tiny and filthy, with something wrong with its eyes and its paws, and it was still meowing. He carried it straight to his mother.
The vets at the Humane Society of Yuma found a respiratory infection and an eye damaged badly enough that it would have to come out.
Somebody explained that to him. That the cat was going to lose an eye.
"I don't care as long as he lives, because he's my best friend," he said.
Peaches kept one eye and got a home. He now lives with Zayin's family alongside six other cats and three dogs, and sleeps next to his head.
A skate shop in town heard what had happened and gave Zayin a gift card, so he went down and built himself a new board exactly how he wanted it.
Last October, at the Plaza Hotel in New York, the ASPCA named him Kid of the Year.
"We are meant to be together, and I saved him. He's mine. He is my best friend" 💛