Strange Sounds - Part 1

Today marks a year from the day we brought Walli home, and I thought I'd tell the story of how her adventures with us began...

The picture shows her shortly after she came to us.

The Wall Cat

The metal growled hoarsely as I turned the key in the lock. I applied my usual shoulder-followed-by-snap-kick before the old wooden door gave way and swung open with a long groan. Once inside, I breathed in the pleasantly musty and familiar smell of an old house. Another day of work was about to begin.

A cat meowed. Wait a minute! There were no cats here. I looked around the small home-turned-office building and heard it again. It was the distinctive sound of a small kitten screaming for its Momma.

I looked everywhere but couldn’t see a cat. Obviously, there was no cat in here. I had locked up last night myself, and there definitely was no cat here when I left. There were some strays on the property, but all the openings to the crawl space beneath the house had been blocked and I knew there was no way inside the house anyway. I went outside and looked around the corner. The sound disappeared. I went back inside. There it was again. A kitten crying and crying, sounding quite desperate now.

It sounded like it came from the bathroom. I went there, but now it sounded like it came from the other room, on the other side of the wall. I went back to where I started. In there, the sound decidedly appeared to come from the bathroom… suddenly, I realized – the sound was coming from inside the wall! Amazed, I put my ear to the wall like a stethoscope. The sound got stronger, and now I could hear clawing and scratching, too. If it weren’t for the constant yammering I would have thought there was a rat in the wall.

The sound came from a spot at about my head level and I could hear the little creature scratch and climb up the wall a ways, then thump! It would fall back down to the same spot where it started.

This routine would repeat itself over and over, accompanied by more and more desperate cries. I called my hubby and held the phone up to the wall so he could hear, too. “I’m afraid the little thing is going to die in there,” I said. “I can’t seem to find a way in or out of this wall.” Realizing the company owners had just spent a considerable amount of money renovating the place, the thought of cutting a hole in the wall seemed catastrophic.

To be continued…