A Houston man holds the kitten he rescued from inside the wall of his apartment. Screenshot: KTRK-TV

April 25 (UPI) -- A Houston family whose dog wouldn't stop barking and growling at a wall discovered the cause of the canine's unease: a kitten trapped inside the wall.

Alexis Guerrero and Alfred Griffin said their dog, Little Momma, started paying unusual attention to a wall in their apartment a few days ago, leading them to investigate.


"She would not stop growling so I said, 'What? Show mommy.' But she wasn't looking at the front door, she was looking this way," Guerrero told KTRK-TV.

Griffin said Little Momma followed him into the room one day "and went straight to the wall and was like, 'mmm get it out.'"

The couple listened closely to the wall and heard what sounded like a mother cat and her kittens.

They said they started to worry when they couldn't hear the mother cat anymore.

"It was hard for her to get out so she had to leave her baby. So you can imagine how she felt about that," Guerrero said.

The family decided the only thing to do was to cut through the wall.

"I was perplexed even wondering how the cat got down there. There's a maze of nails sticking out of the wall," Griffin said.

They were successful in freeing the kitten, which they dubbed "Angel" at the urging of their grandson.

"This is Angel, the winner from the wall," Griffin said. "I wasn't a cat person before but I guess I'll have to adjust. And we will, right, Angel?"

Firefighters in Florida executed a similar rescue last month when they responded to a Fort Lauderdale home where the residents reported hearing the sounds of a kitten inside their walls.

Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue used a thermal imaging camera to locate and rescue the kitten, which was dubbed Wall-ee.