After five long years of entrapment inside the wall of a subway station in Cairo, Egypt, a cat was finally set free last month. The poor feline was first discovered in 2010 by an elderly man known as Uncle Abdo, who heard its meows from behind the wall at Mohamed Naguib Metro station. After checking the premises, Abdo found a tiny hole and realized the cat must have crawled inside and had gotten stuck. He named the cat Biso, and made it mission to take care of it.

At first,Uncle Abdo, who owns a shop outside the station, wasn’t sure of what to do about the situation – he would have liked to break open the wall the free the cat, but that would have meant destruction of public property. So he continued to bring food and water for Biso, reaching into the hole and placing them there so that she could survive. The bizarre arrangement continued for five long years. Even during the revolution on January 25, 2011, when most stores were closed, Uncle Abdo went to the station, just to feed Biso.

“I do it for God, what is for God does not go away,” Uncle Abdo said, adding that God rids him of many problems for such good deeds.

Biso’s ordeal finally ended last month, when someone posted a picture of her tail sticking out of the wall on a Facebook page titled “Help and rescue homeless animals”. The photograph got shared several times and it finally caught the attention of local animal rights activist Mounira Shehata. She arrived at the site with fellow activists Marwa Elgebaly and Rania el-Kordy, to finally set Biso free.

The trio spoke to employees at the metro station, but they were told that they needed to come back when the concerned official was present. So instead they filed a report at the Abdeen police station the next day. Police officers, along with civil defense personnel, arrived at the location and immediately got to work rescuing Biso.

“When we removed the wall, a heinous smell emerged from the dark hole, which was 15-centimeter wide and four-meter long,” said Shehata. “It was like a tomb. There were black worms along four meters of the edge, where Uncle Abdo was able to put in food for Biso.”

The rescue operation took five long hours, and when the wall was finally opened up, Biso was supposedly too terrified to come out. She only emerged after a worker at the station went inside the hole to bring her out. Once she was out, she ran away before anyone could even get a good look at her. Shehata and Uncle Abdo had to spend several more hours looking for Biso at the station.

The unusual rescue operation drew the attention of commuters, many of whom started asking if the police were there to defuse a bomb. After seeing the cat emerge from behind the wall, some were shocked and left speechlessly, while other stayed to assist with looking for the scared animal. “Shock is not a negative reaction. Those people will take the time to think about they saw, and they will probably reconsider how they look at animals,” Shehata said.

Source: The Cairo Post