The Cat(s) in the Wall
30. The Margiest of all Margie Stories
Watch this 60 second clip, from Margie’s HOF speech, before reading this story.
If I hadn’t lived through this story, I probably wouldn’t believe it. It sounds too ridiculous to be real. And yet, here we are. True story.
During the softball season of 2008 Margie’s cat, Spock, went missing. Spock was a free spirit, prone to wandering. It wasn’t that unusual for him to disappear, at first.
When Margie and I checked in each day, whether I asked or not (I didn’t), I always heard the latest on her animals. At first, Spock’s absence was a footnote. After three or four days, she became more concerned. She asked the neighbors and pieced together the last known sightings, like a detective. People had seen him and that gave her hope. But he still wasn’t coming home.
I was, let’s say, a less-than-empathetic friend. Instead of validating her concerns and worries, I was dismissive and kept telling her he’d be fine. I brushed it off. “Oh, Marge, cats do this. He’ll be back.” I wasn’t the best listener. I only cared about the cat because Margie cared about him.
More than a week passed and things got weird.
Margie’s other cats started acting strange; sitting in the hallway, staring at walls, meowing loudly. Margie had the feeling they were trying to draw her attention to something. She couldn’t figure it out. She swore she heard meows coming from her spare bedroom. She tore it apart, checking under the bed, in the closet, behind the furniture, but nothing. She started to suspect Spock was in her house somewhere, maybe in the walls. I thought she was crazy and told her so. But like always, Margie knew.
So she did what any rational person would do. She hired a guy with a thermal imaging machine to scan her walls. Again, I believed she had lost it. Paying a lot of money for a “Ghostbuster” type of contraption to scan her walls? Only Margie.
The guy found nothing. But I could tell Margie never completely trusted that machine.
And to be fair, she had reason to doubt it. A few days earlier, she thought she heard meowing coming from a wall in another room and actually bashed a hole in that wall, looking for Spock. She couldn’t pinpoint it. I believe there were at least three holes in her house before this all ended. She didn’t care. She was determined.
Meanwhile, her team kept winning. Salisbury hosted the softball conference championship that year, and they won the title. Margie came home exhausted and sank into her favorite leather chair. The joy of winning was real, but her heart and mind were still with Spock. She sat in silence, decompressing, listening. It had been seventeen days since she last saw her cat.
And then …Meow.
Margie shot up like a woman possessed, calling out, “I’m coming for you, Spock! Keep talking!” And he did. He led her with his voice, to the same wall the other cats had been singing to for days.
She scrambled, grabbed a hammer and cautiously knocked through the drywall, again.
And there he was.
Seventeen days stuck in the wall. Margie quickly got him some water and he drank like he’d been in desert. I know it sounds unbelievable or like some made-up story. It is not.
So how did this happen?
The ceiling in Margie’s garage was not completely finished, so the cats loved to climb up and jump from rafter to rafter. They would also explore the 2nd floor of her house beyond the garage, which for Spock was the eaves, between the walls of the attic and the sides of the house. It seems that one day, while adventuring, he must have lost his footing and slipped into the narrow gap between the walls, becoming trapped.
Margie had done everything to find him. She set out food to lure him home, went on morning and evening search walks, climbed around in the attic, put up flyers, and stayed in constant contact with her neighbors. She was obsessed with finding Spock.
I always thought she should have called the thermal imagining guy back to tell him the cat was, in fact, in the wall! But I don’t think she ever did. She didn’t care about that. All she cared about was getting her cat back.
Margie turned this ordeal into a motivational story for her team: Never give up. Keep fighting. Keep searching. When Boots (another cat) got stuck in the same spot a decade later (because she never fixed the garage ceiling, which was the issue), Margie found him too. She told her team the story and the rallying cry became, “Be Like Boots”. Boots was a fighter, afterall.
While there’s a lot to this story, what resonates most with me is that Margie never gave up. Even when the odds were long, she always trusted her instincts, and never stopped believing she’d find her cat. And she wasn’t just this way with Spock (and later, Boots). She led her teams with the same unshakable belief, and the same unwillingness to give up on people. That was part of her magic. When she believed in you, you could bet she’d fight for you,…hammer in hand, if necessary.
The mantra was “Be Like Boots”, however, I think the real goal is to be a little more like Margie.
PS- This all happened over 15 years ago, and I wrote it entirely from memory. I’m sure many reading this will remember other wild details that I’ve forgotten. The thermal imaging guy may have been there twice, and I think she may have climbed into the garage ceiling a few times as well. I also have a vague memory of her exploring a neighbors crawl space (I remember hearing about all the bugs!). The exact timeline is fuzzy. What I’ve written is my best recollection, and I appreciate your grace. 🌲🌲
Love this story!!! 💕
Another great story!!