A Stray Survivor : Feline Was Sealed in an Attic Without Food or Water

Curiosity didn’t kill this cat, but it came awfully close.

A cat was found alive after being trapped in the attic of a Sand Canyon house for more than two weeks with no food or water, despite several days of record-breaking heat.

Apparently, the feline sneaked through a hole in roof made Aug. 5 while workers repaired earthquake damage to the house’s chimney and was sealed inside.

The black, female cat, estimated to be about a year old, was discovered in the attic Sunday by Georgia George when she returned home from a vacation to Europe. George said she and her niece, Mary Mingo, of Reno, heard faint meowing.

“We thought it was on the roof, so we looked all over the roof with a flashlight and we couldn’t find anything,” she said. “The more we listened to its little meow, the more we figured out it was in the attic.”

Mingo placed a dish of water near the attic’s entrance to lure the cat, George said. She said the cat was so thin she could put her fingers around it “like a bracelet.”

“You just can’t believe how lightweight it was,” she said.

Exposed water pipes in the attic may have saved the cat’s life by providing condensation, George said.

She has been feeding the cat small amounts of food at a time and it appears to be recovering its strength. In fact, she said, it has started scratching her furniture.

“We’re looking for the real owner because I really don’t want a cat,” she said, adding she will keep and feed it outside if nobody claims it.

The cat is the second Santa Clarita Valley feline to become trapped because of the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake. Tiffany, a 10-year-old Persian mix, panicked during the earthquake and ran into a storage shed. Neighbors found her barely alive 41 days later. She died of malnutrition several days later.