Kittens caught in concrete floor, builders tear up house looking for them

Posted: May 30, 2012 11:27 AM by NBC News
Updated: Oct 16, 2012 11:36 AM

Kitten found inside the concrete of a garage floor

A mysterious sound, a dreadful realization, and a miraculous rescue.

A cat was trapped in one of the most unlikely places imaginable, and somehow made it out alive.

Meet Crete. As in, concrete. He's named that because his owner rescued him from inside of a garage floor.

Builders were working on a new home in West Jordan when they thought they heard meowing.

"The sheetrockers said they kept hearing the cat," said contractor David Best. "So they started tearing apart the walls and cutting holes in things looking for this cat."

The workers made their way around the home, cutting holes in numerous rooms trying to find the animal.

"I thought maybe it had climbed up in there and slid down and got stuck," said contractor Russell Evans. "So I just cut it out and I'm like tearing it out, and I'm like, 'Where is the cat?'"

"These guys would call, 'Hey kitty, kitty, kitty,' and it would meow, and I thought, 'Wow, it's in the middle,' and we've got our ears to the ground and everything," Best said.

The bizarre reality finally set in.

"I call Rich, and I'm like, 'I can hear the cat. It's in the concrete, I know it,'" Evans said.

This home's garage floor has a hollow-core concrete slab underneath it, with compartments like a honey-comb.

The cat had apparently made its way into one of the segments before the garage floor was poured, 12 days earlier.

When workers realized where the cat was, they made plans to rescue the cat, because the alternative was just too grim.

Despite the cost of damages the rescue would cost, into the garage floor they went. As soon as the hole was big enough, the cat dashed away.

But there was another surprise waiting for them; several other sets of glowing eyes shined out of the darkness.

It hadn't been just one cat, but a mother and her litter of three kittens.

The kittens were extremely malnourished, and the 12-day darkness left little Crete blind.

"He can kind of see once in a while, but for the most part he's pretty blind, is what the doctor said," Evans said.

The workers adopted two of the kittens, and the third, which was too deep in the hole to reach, seems to have been taken by the mother.