Firefighters demolish wall to free cat wedged in three-inch gap

Pearl the curious cat has definitely used up one of her nine lives thanks to her latest ill-fated adventure. Her owner Betty Martin, 32, was baffled when the fun-loving moggie mysteriously vanished from her garden in Meadow Edge, Barepot, near Workington. It was only when Betty heard the sound of scrabbling that she found out what had happened – and saw 11-month old Pearly firmly wedged and stranded in a three-inch gap between the garage and a six-feet high garden wall. Unable to reach her pet, which was becoming increasingly distressed, Betty felt that she had no choice but to call the fire service.



A crew from Workington’s white watch rose to the occasion. “They told me they could either knock down the garden wall, or knock down the garage,” said 32-year-old Betty, a paramedic. “It happened on Tuesday afternoon and it was one of those days when everything goes wrong. The cats had been running around the garden, chasing after bees and wasps and chasing each other. I’d gone into the house to prepare their food and when I came back out Pearl was nowhere to be seen.”

Betty spent half an hour searching in and around the garden, but could see no sign of her missing cat. “Then I heard the scrabbling and looked between the wall and the garage. She was completely wedged in. You don’t want to call the emergency services if you can avoid it, but I had no choice. It took them about 40 minutes to get her out: they took down the wall brick by brick. Then they picked Pearl out and handed her to me, and the first thing she did was shake herself, covering me in bits of rubble and dust.


Photo from here.

“She’d lost one claw and worn the others down to nothing. We can replace the garden wall but we couldn’t have replaced Pearl. She was feeling sorry for herself yesterday but she’s okay now – and oblivious to the chaos she’s caused. When I was looking for Pearl, I’d been cooking a casserole. And when I got into the house I found that it had exploded in the oven – so it was a trip to the chip shop!” Betty added a huge thanks to the firefighters, saying: “I want to thank them for being so kind and considerate. They were fantastic.”