Woman Finds Her Cat Trapped In Drywall After Bathroom Renovation

An Indiana woman was at a loss when she found her cat inside a bathroom wall that had recently undergone renovation.

Ashlin Hadden said she was taking a peaceful dip in her bathtub after returning from a business trip to New York when she heard her cat meow from inside the newly-erected drywall. Anxious, Hadden broke through the wall, and to her greatest surprise, the feline, named Stripes, emerged from inside the cavity.

Hadden told Today that she had hired a contractor to get the job done before she left for New York and left the house to him as she trusted him. Meanwhile, Hadden sent her sons to stay with their father and made arrangements for her cats, Stripes, and Cookie, to have automatic food and water through dispensers and litter boxes. The woman said she informed the workers that the cats were allowed to roam freely in the house.

In a now-viral TikTok video which she posted Wednesday, Hadden said she sensed something wrong when Cookie, who doesn't meow much, vocally welcomed her home and Stripes was nowhere to be seen. "I'm like, 'Man, what's going on?' And, 'Did you guys run out of food?'" she said.

Hadden said that after hearing Stripes' cries, she searched throughout the house and figured that the sound was coming from behind the wall. "I'm upstairs, and I'm looking around and hear him meow, and I'm like, 'Oh my God. He's behind the wall,'" the woman said in the TikTok post which has now been viewed more than 2.6 million times.

Hadden immediately rushed to a neighbor's house and grabbed a drywall-cutting tool but decided to punch through the wall instead for fear that the tool would hurt the animal.

Once she broke open a slab, the seemingly uninjured but "shaken up" cat leaped out. Hadden said she took Stripes to a vet and after some IV fluids, it was back in "his little pistol self."

"I love our pets," Hadden said. "They're like children to me." She added that ever since the incident, a very hyperactive Stripes who likes running and hiding would spend most of the day in bed or on their laps.

Meanwhile, Hadden said she is planning to hire a cat sitter to avoid such incidents in the future as she travels for work.