Last Updated on May 29, 2026 by admin
Stucco the cat was inside the wall of a Glendale rental house. Nine firefighters and four hours later, they finally found him.
Maya Tovar moved into the rental on Mountain Street on April 25. She had toured the house twice in February. She had signed the lease in March. She had carried the last of the boxes in herself on a Friday evening with the help of her brother Andres and a borrowed Penske truck. The cat — a six-year-old gray-and-white short hair named Stucco, after a brief and unfortunate incident with a textured ceiling in her last apartment — had been the first thing into the house, as he always was. He had explored. He had inspected the kitchen cabinets. He had vanished, as he did periodically, into one of the empty rooms.
Maya did not panic at first. Stucco vanishes. Stucco reappears. Stucco has, in his six-year career, vanished into closets, under beds, behind washers, on top of the refrigerator, inside the bathroom vent housing (briefly), and, in 2023, into the trunk of Maya’s mother’s Toyota Camry for the better part of an afternoon. He has always come back.
On day eighteen, Stucco did not come back.
Maya noticed late. Day eighteen was a Wednesday, the thirteenth, and she had been at a friend’s birthday dinner until ten p.m. She got home, called for Stucco at the back door, opened a can of food, called again. Nothing. She did the rooms. She did the closets. She did the spaces behind every piece of furniture she could move. By midnight she was on the phone with her brother. By two a.m. they had checked every cabinet in the kitchen. By four a.m. she had filed a missing-pet report on Nextdoor and sat down on the living room floor and started to cry.
At six fifteen a.m., she heard meowing.
Stucco was inside the wall.
It was the south wall of the second bedroom, which Maya had been using as a home office. She put her ear flat against the drywall. She heard, faintly, the unmistakable two-note plaintive vocalization of a cat who has been in a wall for some amount of time he did not personally consent to.
She called Glendale Fire Rescue at six twenty-two a.m. The dispatcher walked her through the procedure: do not, under any circumstances, start cutting drywall yourself, as you do not know what is behind the wall and you may injure the cat. Glendale Fire Rescue Station 28 dispatched two firefighters. They were on scene by six fifty-three.
By eight thirty, the two firefighters had become four. By ten, the four had become seven. By the time they pulled Stucco out at ten forty-eight, there were nine firefighters in the house, plus a thermal imaging camera borrowed from Station 21, plus a borescope from Station 19, plus a small drone-mounted endoscope that Captain Rey Mateo had brought from his personal collection of restoration-contractor tools.
The problem was geometry. The wall Stucco had gotten into was a knee wall — built when the bedroom had been an unfinished attic, sometime in the late 1970s — with three internal pony-wall divisions and a structural cross brace at hip height. There was no easy access. The hole that needed to be cut had to be cut precisely, both to avoid the cross brace and to avoid the unmarked wiring that Captain Mateo, on the borescope feed, was watching cross the wall cavity at three points.
They cut six holes before they cut the right one.
The first was at floor level on the south wall. Empty.
The second was at hip height. Empty.
The third was on the inside of the closet. Empty — but, on the borescope, they saw a flash of fur and a yellow eye, two cavities over.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth were attempts to get to that cavity. They had to come from the closet side, then around the chimney chase, then under the cross brace. They had to cut a fist-sized opening in the back wall of the closet, then a second opening in the chase, then a third opening at knee height on the bedroom side of the chase.
Stucco emerged from the seventh hole, headfirst.
He was, according to the medic on scene, in better shape than expected. He was dehydrated. He had a small abrasion on his left shoulder. His paws were black with dust and insulation. He was, the medic noted, complaining at full volume and producing, on examination, a strong purr the moment he was on the patient’s lap.
The patient was Maya. She was on the floor of the bedroom, in front of the seventh hole, with a blue waffle blanket she had brought from the linen closet. She took Stucco. She did not say anything for a full minute. She held him.
Captain Mateo, on the body cam audio, can be heard saying to the other firefighters: let’s give them a second.
Stucco is now back in his usual carrier. He has been to the vet. He is on subcutaneous fluids and a course of meloxicam for the shoulder abrasion. He has, in the days since, slept on Maya’s chest more or less continuously, with occasional excursions to the food bowl.
The landlord has been informed. The seven holes in the south wall of the second bedroom are being repaired by Captain Mateo’s restoration company, on the captain’s personal time, at no charge to Maya. He said, on the phone: I am not going to bill a woman who just spent eighteen hours convinced her cat was dead in a wall. I am also not going to bill the cat. The cat is exempt.
If you have a cat who has ever vanished, the Glendale Fire Rescue PIO would like to remind you: every wall has a chase. Every chase has gaps. If your cat is missing, listen to your walls before you tear apart your house. And if you hear meowing, call us.
If you are a landlord, please mark your wiring routes on your prints, the captain says. It saved us about an hour.
If you are Stucco, please do not do that again.