For five days, nobody could find her. She was trapped upside down behind a wall, too weak to cry out — until a stranger refused to give up.
This is the rescue that had everyone holding their breath.
Vanished Into the Walls
Lola, a pet cat in Long Island, New York, panicked while her owners were packing to move out of their second-floor apartment. On September 4, she slipped under a floorboard and disappeared.
Her owners called John DeBacker, an animal rescuer with 15 years of experience. He set a trap with food and cameras — but Lola avoided it when she came out at night. Then she stopped showing up altogether.
The Hole in the Wall
DeBacker realized the terrible truth: Lola had fallen and was stuck behind a wall on the first floor of the building. Five days after contact was lost, she was found — trapped upside down, eating insulation, growing weaker by the hour.
On September 18, working with a contractor, DeBacker cut a hole in the wall. In the video, wearing his "Catman" T-shirt, he reaches through the hole for her hind legs and slowly, gently pulls her out. "Safe!" someone cries as sighs of relief fill the room.
The Reunion Everyone Waited For
"Seeing the cat alive was the greatest feeling in the world," DeBacker said afterward. Lola was placed in a crate, checked over — and reunited with her owners.
Two weeks after she first escaped, the little survivor was finally home. It took one man's refusal to walk away — and a hole cut in a wall — to turn a tragedy into the feel-good rescue story of the week.
