Girl ultimately liked keeping cat, it's stated (9)
I believe the answer is:
announced
'stated' is the definition.
(announcing is a kind of stating)
'girl ultimately liked keeping cat' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'girl' could be 'ann' (woman's name) and 'ann' is found in the answer.
'cat' could be 'ounce' (ounce can mean a snow leopard) and 'ounce' is located in the answer.
A single letter 'd' remains which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
'it's' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for announced that I've seen before include "Declared publicly" , "Revealed" , "published" , "reported" , "Proclaimed" .)