Cat rescued from inside chimney: 'She was just happy to be out of there'

— -- Crystal the orange cat is lucky to see daylight again after getting stuck in her family’s chimney for an hour.

The Harrisburg Fire Department in North Carolina rescued the beloved pet after chasing her meows to find her approximate location inside the two-story chimney.

“Luckily the cat kept meowing and meowing which help minimize damage to the house,” the fire department’s public information officer, David Bradshaw, told ABC News. “We used our best judgment on where we thought she could be and pulled the boards off the side of the house and cut a hole in there, and no sooner than we were sticking our hands in, her head was sticking out of that hole. Immediately she said, ‘Hey, I’m getting out of here.’ She climbed out right into the firefighter’s arms.”

The kitty had been stuck in between the chimney and the home’s decorative siding surrounding it.

“She had gotten up there, we think, chasing something and got herself wedged 20 feet down in between the wall and the chimney,” said Bradshaw. “We tried going in through the top of the chimney, we tried going through the attic and we couldn’t do it. We called animal control because even if we could’ve gotten ahold of her neck and pulled him out we needed one of their longer poles.”

Bradshaw said this is the first time in his 30-year career the fire department has rescued a pet from a chimney.

“This was an odd one for sure,” he laughed. “She was just happy to be out of there.”

It was a cool ending to an otherwise heated situation.