“I Heard Him Meowing & Scratching” — Woman Claims Maintenance Team Seals Woman’s Cat Behind Wall

A pet owner speculates her apartment's hired maintenance team may've intentionally trapped her cat behind a sheet rock wall after she had to free the feline from behind the structure by cutting into it and creating a large enough opening for him to escape.

Jay (@myworld.wejustliveinit) posted a viral TikTok that has users on the application up in arms. In it, she documents her struggle in extricating her pet cat, Taytay, from behind the wall. Numerous folks in the comments section of the video stated that they find it hard to believe the maintenance workers didn't know the cat was behind there while working.

It's a sentiment that Jay echoed herself in response to some of the comments other folks on the application left behind in response to her video. There were other people who shared their own horror stories involving pets and people working in their home, with numerous others urging her to sue the property management company that runs the apartment complex she lives in.

A text overlay instructs viewers to "*listen closely*" to the video.

"That awkward moment when your complex's 'maintenance' team patches your cat INTO THE F*CKIN WALL!!" reads another overlay directly beneath it.

"Taytay," the TikToker can be heard saying off camera as a cat's muffled meowing can be heard in the video. "Come here!" she says at a later point in the video, "Oh he's sticking his hand out."

At this point in the video it appears that a hole was made in the wall to give her cat enough room to escape. The feline can be seen sticking its paws through the hole to touch its owner. "Hold on wait let me make it bigger, move, move, move, move," she tells the cat and she pries more pieces of sheet rock from the wall with one hand as she records the incident.

"I'm sorry I'm trying to get him to move I don't want to stab him," she says as she takes a knife to the wall to cut out more chunks of the wall to give Taytay a bigger escape hole.

"This is ridiculous move Taytay," she tells the cat who is hovering near the hole. The cat could be heard meowing in the background and Jay tries to kick the wall in. Another caption emblazoned on the video footage explains her wall kick attempt.

"The 911 operator told me to try to kick a hole into the wall," she adds that it was a "fail."

"Like it doesn't look like that it looks like they plastered the whole like back of the wall...I can't, it's like they put I don't know what they did," she says as she hacks away at the wall.

"This is so crazy," she whispers to herself, labored, as she continues to hack at the wall. "I don't, I don't know," she says as she uses her hands to pull away another piece of wall.

Satisfied with the size of the hole, she begins to call out for Taytay to come through the hole, "Okay this has to be big enough, come on! Come on!" she tells the cat, "come here, come on."

The kitty pokes his head out through the hole and attempts to leave the wall. Jay puts down her phone to try and help the cat make it through, which she does successfully.

"I was so relieved after I got him like omg y'all I was balling my eyes out my cats are my babies," she writes in another overlay of the video. Taytay then begins to trot away from the hole into presumably another part of the house.

Someone who responded to Jay's video wrote that the same thing happened to them when they hired an HVAC team to come and work on their home, noting that the company rendered a rather callous reply after they called them out for trapping their pet inside of a wall: "THIS HAPPENED TO ME. an HVAC company trapped my cat in the wall, and when my husband told them and asked for help they told us to get a new cat! I lost it"

This isn't the first time someone documented a contractor / home improvement worker sealing their pet behind a wall: The Independent posted a story in 2022 about the same thing happening.

A good rule of thumb to follow if you're having anyone work on your home is if you have pets to keep them away from the work area by keeping them in a room / carrier until said work is completed for their safety.