MARION, Ark. — When Bubba the cat disappeared inside
the home he shares with Cheryl and Phillip Albers, they knocked holes
in walls looking for him, but he couldn't be found.
Bubba's meows
could be heard through the night Monday, Cheryl Albers said, after he
vanished following a visit from an air-conditioner repairman.
Bubba
normally hides high atop a kitchen cabinet when there is a stranger in
the house that he doesn't want to meet, Albers said. He wasn't there,
however, after the repairman left Monday.
Taking their cue from
where they thought the meowing was coming from, the Albers cut holes in
the walls of their dining room, their hallway and their closet. Then,
they cut through the floor boards in their attic and ripped out
insulation — all to no avail. The meows continued, but there was no
sign of the cat making them.
Finally, on Thursday, the Albers called Roto Rooter.
"We're plumbers, not cat finders," Roto Rooter's Fred Simmons told Memphis, Tenn., television station WMC.
But using a camera-equipped metal snake to search between the walls, Simmons turned out to be a cat finder after all.
"We just run the camera down through it and seen two eyes," Simmons said.
Bubba
had fallen into a hole in the wall at her favorite hiding place and got
stuck in a narrow passageway between the cabinet and the wall. After
putting one more hole in the hall closet, Bubba was set free.
"She's really good today," Albers said Friday. "She's eating and drinking and we're all happy again."
In typical cat style, Bubba snubbed the man who saved her life, but her owner couldn't be more grateful.
Simmons said Roto Rooter won't be charging the Albers for the hours spent looking for Bubba.
But Bubba's adventure won't be cheap — they still have to repair the damage they did to their home.