Yuliya Mihalik broke into a smile as she opened the door to a room full of cats at the Oregon Humane Society. Some stared down at her with what seemed to her like questioning eyes. Others ran up to Mihalik and “mews” fill the room.

Mihalik, who served as a volunteer, scanned the room quickly until her eyes landed on a cat with a mess of orange and caramel fur named Aveda. The cat, with its large green eyes, captured Mihalik’s attention when the feline was first brought to the Humane Society.

Mihalik remembers going home and slyly suggesting to her parents that they adopt the cat. But they firmly told her that it wasn’t going to happen. She was saddened by the prospect of knowing that she would only take care of Aveda until the cat was adopted. She hoped it wouldn’t happen while she was volunteering.

Then one Friday, while Mihalik was sitting with Aveda grooming her, someone walked in and asked her to hand the cat over. “I physically had to hand over my cat,” she recalls. “The cat that I had always thought of as my own.”

At the end of her shift, she headed to the car where her parents were waiting and broke down. When she explained how sad she was that her favorite cat had been adopted, her parents smiled. “My mom laughed and said, ‘you mean this cat,’” Mihalik recalls, as her parents showed her they had adopted Aveda.

Aveda became the first pet “that I actually felt was my own,” she explains. Later on, Mihalik renamed her Pie and devoted much of her spare time playing and taking care of her. “I would come home and just lay on the couch talking to her,” Mihalik says.

Pie wasn’t the only animal the Mihalik family adopted. Recently, Mihalik  got a dog from the Humane Society named Mal. The dog is a small terrier that Mihalik calls “her little baby.” The two of them are very close.

Walking down the halls of Grant High School, Mihalik is easy to spot. The 17-year-old senior is known as “Cape Girl.” She is quick to explain that “it’s not a cape, it’s a cloak.” A number of students on campus have stereotyped her as some sort of fantasy-oriented person.

But for as long as Mihalik can remember, she has “always had a strong passion for animals.”  Whether it’s taking care of her relatives’ pets, volunteering at the Humane Society or reading about horses, animals have captivated her for years.

“Animals are a lot more intelligent than we give them credit. They have emotions and likes and dislikes just like we do,” Mihalik explains.

“Yuliya is very curious. Even as a child, she showed how much she wanted to learn. Yuliya is intrigued by the complexity of them,” her father Gregory Mihalik says.

Mihalik says she wants to become an animal psychiatrist. She yearns to learn more about how animals think and understand things that are not yet known to people.

At a young age, Mihalik’s parents noticed that their daughter was extremelly intelligent, more than the average child. She was invited to apply to Access Academy, an advanced learning program in the Portland Public School district. In order to get in, Mihalik had to go through a series of rigorous tests. She had to be in the 99th percentile of student across the United States in order to be eligible for acceptance. She was.

Her parents said on a couple of her tests, she scored a 100 percent for the whole region. “There’s only one person in the region that gets 100 percent, and for Yuliya to get it, well, that’s a pretty big deal,” says her father.

The family’s devotion to animals dates back to Mihalik’s parents, with whom she shares a close relationship. Mihalik has two older sisters,  Andria, 21 and Nadia, 26, whom she is very close to. “They never fail to cheer me up,” Mihalik says with a smile.

When their mother, Hope, was a girl, her family had horses. The pictures and stories she heard from her mother intrigued Mihalik. She would spend “hours and hours just reading about them,” Mihalik recalls.

It was on her ninth birthday that Mihalik went on her first horseback ride with her parents and sisters. As the horses trotted out of the stable, Mihalik saw a large black horse. “He was so big that I thought for sure he would be the one my dad rode,” she said. The horse’s name turned out to be Rose and it was the one Mihalik ended up mounting for the ride.

Mihalik says she doesn’t “spend as much time” as she wants to with horses. But while most high school kids are out partying or going to football games, Mihalik spends the majority of her Friday evenings at the Humane Society.

She has volunteered to walk dogs and socialize with cats there since she was in seventh grade. “Volunteering is perfect for me because it allows me to interact with animals, my passion, as well as do something meaningful,” Mihalik says.

Sasha Moyle, the youth and group volunteer coordinator at the Humane Society, has seen Mihalik in action. She describes Mihalik as a “very dedicated volunteer that works hard to get everything done. She is a wonderful volunteer, she’s kind and compassionate with the animals, and her work ethic is very good.”

While animals are central in Mihalik’s life, she is also a very creative individual. Mihalik went by Julia, her birth name, until she met her best friend, whose name was Julia, as well. So, Mihalik decided to change her name to Yuliya, a name that captures her uniqueness, as well as her heritage. Yuliya is the Ukranian version of Julia, and Mihalik’s family has Ukranian roots.

Mihalik is also an avid writer. She mainly writes poems, some autobiographical and others creative. Currently, she is writing a fantasy series called “The Elementals” that she has been writing since sixth grade. “The plot line is really intricate and confusing,” she says. “I’m proud that I came up with it.”

She plans on having three books make up the series, and she is well through her first novel. Mihalik’s goal is to one day see her writing published, although she doesn’t necessarily see herself becoming a writer. “But I’ll never stop writing,” she says. “For me, it’s an ongoing, never-ending process.”

When she gets older, Mihalik wants to work in a field surrounded by animals. A large part of her passion for animals is rooted in words from Temple Grandin, an animal doctor, professor and author. Mihalik has watched many of her speeches and says she is a huge inspiration.

After Mihalik graduates from Grant, she hopes to study animal science. She wants to start working with animals and better understand them. “There are so many things we can learn from animals, but we choose not to because we think that we are above them,” Mihalik says. “I want to learn those things.”