1 Apr 2026
RSPCA animal rescue officers, Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service and a local vet worked to help free Alfie over the course of five hours.
Chris Simpson
Job Title
Alfie was stuck in a 10cm gap between two brick walls in a back garden.
A trapped cat saved in a five-hour “miracle” rescue has been successfully reunited with its owners – after a scan of its microchip revealed it had been missing for four years.
The cat, named Alfie, was found on Mother’s Day (15 March) stuck in a 10cm gap between two brick walls in a back garden on Madeira Road in Portsmouth.
With Alfie – believed to have fallen into the gap from a first-floor roof – “completely wedged” approximately 1.5m in, attending RSPCA animal rescue officer (ARO) Sarah Whatton said she was concerned about causing serious injury by attempting to pull him out.
Fellow ARO Morgan Ellison said: “We tried for hours to free the cat; we tried prising sticks underneath him to support his weight while pulling with the grasper but due to the rubble underneath we couldn’t get enough purchase.
“Firefighters devised a pulley system to try to get a rope around his chest but there wasn’t space around him to get it over his hips.”
While the Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service team had to leave to respond to other calls, the RSPCA duo turned to local vet Rob Lowe, from the Lighthouse 24/7 A&E Pet Hospital.
Mr Lowe helped them jury-rig a makeshift “jab stick” to sedate Alfie to pull him out without him panicking.
Officer Ellison added: “The vet told us once the sedation took effect we had one minute to free him before there was serious risk of breathing difficulties, so we were really up against the clock. We were concerned about injuring him but we’d run out of other options.
“It took all three of us to pull him out and by some absolute miracle he came out unharmed.”
Aside from having some mats removed from his fur, a vet check-up gave the 10-year-old cat a clean bill of health, while a scan from his microchip revealed he had been reported missing in 2022.
He was returned to his family – who lived just two roads away – the same day.
Officer Whatton said: “It was such a crazy rescue but it had such a lovely ending – and it just shows how important it is to have your pets microchipped.”
According to Cats Protection’s 2025 Cats and Their Stats report, less than three-quarters (74%) of UK cats are microchipped – a 1% decrease on the previous year – despite the introduction of compulsory pet cat microchipping in England in 2024, leaving more than 2.6 million cats without a microchip.
