Bubbles the cat has only eight of its nine lives left after being rescued from the wall of a home by the Alexandra Fire Brigade on Saturday afternoon.
The young cat was firmly wedged, face down and tail up, inside the wall of the Gregg St, Alexandra, house after apparently gaining entry through the ceiling somehow, Otago SPCA inspector Helen Saunders said.
The occupant of the house contacted the SPCA after hearing a cat "crying" inside the wall. It was not one of her pets.
"The landlord of the house called in a builder who removed a section of the internal wall, but they still couldn't see the cat, although they could just touch it. We felt it was time to call in the fire brigade, and I said sorry to them for calling them out on a Saturday," Mrs Saunders said.
"They did a marvellous job and took out another section and out came the poor cat, hungry and thirsty and somewhat bemused." As she was taking it to a veterinarian to be checked, she was "flagged down" by a neighbour over the road who said her cat had been missing for several days.
"It was lovely to be able to reunite it with its owner and have a happy ending. The cat, called Bubbles, needed antibiotics for a scrape over its eye and some infected nail beds, where it had obviously been clinging on, but apart from that it was OK," Mrs Saunders said.
