A CAT spent three days trapped in a wall cavity while her owner frantically searched for her.

It eventually took Bolton firemen three hours and two holes in the chimney breast of Janet Crawford's 300-year-old cottage to free Sophie, the accident prone moggy.

Miss Crawford, of Back Caley Street, Doffcocker, had only had grey 10-year-old Persian Sophie and her twin sister Abby for a few hours after collecting them from Bleakholt Animal Sanctuary on Good Friday when Sophie went missing.

Miss Crawford, her family and friends spent three days searching for the cat, not realising she was still inside the house.

The cat had ventured into the bathroom, which is in the process of being renovated, crawled under the bath and dropped 11ft down a hole in the wall behind it.

The searchers were finally alerted to Sophie's plight and the hole in the wall on Easter Sunday by Abby, who had been constantly trying to get into the bathroom and even managed to pull the replaced bath panel off.

And when Miss Crawford heard a muffled miaow coming from the hole in the wall she called in the fire service.

"The cat miaowed and so we knew she was down there. We were overjoyed but we had no idea how to get to her," said she said.

Firemen from Bolton Central station tried unsuccessfully to coax Sophie out by dangling a sheet down the 4inch by 12inch wide hole for her to grab on to. Because of the dust, fur and horse hair which has been used to build the walls three centuries ago, the firemen could not see how far down the cat was and with no more noise from the cat, hopes were fading that she was still alive.

The crew then hit upon the idea of bringing in a specialist "snake eye" camera from Leigh fire station, more often used to locate people in collapsed buildings, to put down the hole.

They used it to find Sophie's exact position and then knocked a hole in the kitchen chimney breast.

As fireman Ian Griffiths reached into the hole for the cat she sprang out, racing around the kitchen.

"All I heard was this cheer and the cat shot out covered in dust. It is unbelievable. I didn't think we would get her out alive," said Miss Crawford, who was scratched by an ungrateful Sophie when she tried to pick her up.

Firemen, who feared at one point that they could not get the cat out alive, were delighted to have a successful outcome to their work.

"It is not nice leaving an incident when it has not come to any conclusion. We are very pleased," said crew manager David Holden.

"I can't thank them enough," said Miss Crawford. "What they did was above and beyond the call of duty. They never gave up. At one point they were even talking about digging out the soil in the cellar to reach her."

After a quick check up with the vet showed Sophie had suffered nothing more than hurt pride she was reunited with her sister, but memories of her incarceration mean Sophie now doesn't like the dark.

"She howled when I turned the light out, so I let her sleep with it on," said a relieved Miss Crawford.