• Vet Mike Lawley was prepared to risk a drilled hand to ensure the safety of adventurous moggy Mishka.

A LOCAL vet went beyond the call of duty last Friday during the dramatic rescue of an intrepid moggy in South Fremantle.

The drama started when emeritus professor Kateryna Longley and her architect husband Richard arrived home to hear their cat Mishka mewing forlornly, although she appeared to have disappeared.

It took super-sleuth neighbour David Tucker to discover the poor Australian Mist had fallen between the narrow cavity of a two-metre brick wall and was wedged upside-down at the bottom.

Prof Longley said Mishka could have been in there for up to six hours and was obviously distressed. She called the fireys and soon a team was on the job, ready to break through the wall.

But a test hole revealed a rusty nail pressing down on the cat’s face which made the next step quite dangerous.

That’s when local vet Mike Lawley stepped in.

“Mike..lay on the ground and kept his bare hand inside the wall on Mishka’s head while the drilling was a few centimetres away directed towards his hand to get the crucial brick out,” Prof Longley said.

“When I said to him that it was terribly dangerous to leave his hand there, his answer was ‘better my hand than her head’.”

Eventually poor Mishka’s ordeal was over and Prof Longley says the moggy came through a little traumatised but with only minor cuts and grazes.