Kitten stuck in Sharjah lift for 24 hours rescued after online plea goes viral

A group of young men in Sharjah spent an entire night trying to rescue a street kitten that was stuck in their building's elevator for over 24 hours. The rescue attempt, which took place in an apartment complex in Muweilah, involved nine residents, a viral video and some helpful internet strangers.

One of the rescuers, Salman Faris, told Khaleej Times how the story unfolded. “The cat was meowing in the corridor when we left for work,” he said. “We tried looking around whether it was hungry or thirsty but couldn’t find anything. So, we put cat food and water out for it and went to work.”

When the men returned after work, the cat was still meowing but this time, it was near the elevator. “We were puzzled about what it wanted,” said Salman. “We checked on the food and water, and it hadn’t touched anything. We realised that for more than 12 hours, the cat had been meowing continuously and hadn’t eaten anything.”

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The men began their investigation with torches and finally figured out what the issue was. By this time, it was almost midnight. “The meowing cat was the mother and one of her babies was stuck in the elevator,” he said. “Once we figured out that the kitten was trapped, we decided we had to save it.”

After multiple attempts at trying to rescue the animal failed, the men called the Sharjah fire station but were told to contact the municipality for rescue. “By then it was around 1am,” said Ajmal, a roommate of Salman. “We knew that it would be morning before we could contact the municipality. However, we couldn’t go to sleep knowing that the kitten was stuck and its mother was meowing in the corridor.”

After trying several different ways, the men did what they thought was their best option, they posted a video on social media about how the kitten was stuck and asked the internet if they had any ideas.

“Within ten minutes, someone commented with a solution,” said Ajmal. “He suggested that we could force open the lift door from a separate floor and then loop in a rope to lift the kitten.”

Some of the men made their way to the higher floor, forced the door open and looped a rope inside to pull the kitten to safety. Salman posted a second video of the rescue to his Instagram account. The video of the meowing mother and that of the rescue received over 12 million views with commentators hailing the time and effort the men put into saving the kitten. Watch a video of the rescue here:

After pulling the kitten to safety, the men cleaned him and let him get back to his mother. “It was a tense situation,” said Salman. “We wanted to help but we didn’t know how. Our building doesn’t really have a watchman, and we didn’t know how to access the lift controls. Luckily, we embarked on this rescue well past midnight when everyone else in the building were sleeping. So, we were able to do what needed to be done without interruptions.”

Ajmal added that the mother cat and her three kittens still come meowing to them every time they leave to work. “The three kittens are extremely naughty and honestly, we are not surprised that they ended up in such a situation,” he chuckled. “But hopefully they won’t go back into an elevator any time soon.”

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