Treasure in the Attic Vivienne Holtzhausen   © Copyright 2025 by Vivienne Holtzhausen

Photo by Karin Chantanaprayura at Pexels.

We bought the farm when Andre retired. Our lifelong dream - a house in the countryside, mountain views, space for livestock and to grow our own fruit and vegetables. A bonus was that there was a large two bedroom cottage on the property which we could convert into a guest house to generate a small income.

The cottage was a bungalow with a low, pitched roof. At the back of the building there was a door into the attic, about twelve feet above ground level. We tried every key we were given but none would open the door. Scratched around in our junk drawer for all our old keys but still no joy. I asked our local locksmith if he would lend us his master key collection to establish what type of key we were looking for but, after spending two hours up a ladder with two massive rings of keys, we were still none the wiser. The door stood, stoically impermeable.

The door guarded it's secrets and became a bit of an enigma. Visitors to the guest house would ponder the mystery of what could possibly be behind the door, lurking in the attic above their heads. Some even requested a ladder and attempted opening the door with their own keys but all failed. The door just bided it's time.

Andre died the following winter, a shocking end to our plans. I continued to hold everything together for a couple of years but eventually, emotionally and physically exhausted I decided to sell up and move. My dream lay in tatters and I felt utterly defeated. 

The house sold, a farmer bought my livestock and all of my furniture. As he needed to organise a truck to collect everything I moved all the furniture into the cottage so that I could pack what I was keeping without hindrance.

 Two weeks before I was due to move I had cause to go into the cottage. Opening the front door I was overwhelmed by the stench of death and horrified to see huge, lazy bluebottle flies buzzing around. Gagging and aghast I covered my nose and started searching for a body when I heard the faintest mewling coming from the ceiling. Following the sound I realised it was coming from the roof above the bathroom and in the same instant knew that I wouldn't be able to get up there because of the attic door which refused to budge!

In desperation I called a friend, a fellow animal lover, who came immediately to my aid, riding up to my place on his old motorbike, Asher - a short, wiry, no- nonsense kind of guy. He took one look at the situation and flew into action, reassuring me that he would sort it out. He grabbed the ladder and some tools whilst I ran to the main house to find a torch. I returned in time to see him taking an axe to the door, swinging away like a madman as he balanced atop the ladder. This was not quite what I'd had in mind but it was an emergency after all.

As the last remnants of the door fell away Asher crawled into the dark roof space and I followed breathlessly with the torch to reveal.......nothing. Nothing but years of dust, the stench of death and a kitten's plaintive cries. We crawled over to where the cries appeared to be coming from, becoming coated with dust as we made our way across the roof space. When we found it the awful truth dawned on us, the kitten had fallen into the gap between the double walls of the building. Asher managed to squeeze his head into the narrow space between the edge of the wall and the sloping roof and shone the torch into the cavity.

"I can see it Vivienne. We have to get it out, it's resting on a brick ledge.".

And so began one of the most insane rescue attempts ever. Because of the angle of the roof we couldn't actually reach into the wall cavity so we decided to remove the bathroom ceiling. The electricity was switched off as there was a light running into the ceiling. All the garden tools were taken up into the roof and as Asher stood on the bath below and pushed up sections of the ceiling with a wooden pole I would slide a garden implement into the crack to hold it up. When we'd managed to lift one side Asher came back up into the roof and we managed, with great effort, to slide the ceiling away from the wall. Lying on a rafter we could now see and hear the kitten properly but, horror of horrors, it had now fallen clear to the bottom of the wall cavity.

I wept in frustration but Asher, ever positive, told me not to worry as he was going to fetch his angle grinder. Off he went whilst I tried to comfort the distraught kitten by speaking gently to it. I came to the conclusion that it's mother must have been the black feral cat which had been roaming the property but how she'd accessed the roof I had no idea. Now all her kittens lay dead at the bottom of the wall cavity with the one survivor lying on top of the rotting carcasses of its siblings. We had to get it out of there.

Asher returned with the angle grinder and we now moved outside. Guesstimating where the kitten might be Asher started to carve away at the brickwork. The plan was to cut a hole into the cavity close to where the kitten was ( hopefully, not injuring it in the process) and be able to retrieve it. Masonry dust flew everywhere, back and over us but by now we didn't care, we were determined to save the kitten from it's ghastly fate.

Suddenly the note of the grinder changed to a high pitched screech which made our hair stand on end! Liquid spurted from the wall, drenching us.

Water.

Dear Lord, we'd hit a water pipe. I ran up the driveway to turn off the mains. Ran back to the house to find Asher filthy, wet and dejected sitting in a puddle in front of the hole he'd made in the wall.

"Have we drowned it?" , I asked quietly.

He gazed forlornly at me.

"Miaow", came a little voice from behind the wall.

"MIAOW"  and then progressively louder and louder and more insistent. 

"Get me out of here", it seemed to be saying.

Recharged, we took it in turns chipping away at the masonry with a chisel and hammer but by 10.30 that night (we'd started the whole exercise at 2 in the afternoon) we seemed to be no closer to breaking into the cavity and we were exhausted. Sitting under the stars, looking at the seemingly impervious wall by torchlight we decided that we couldn't carry on even though the kitten was still crying.
I told Asher that I'd take him home in my car as he was exhausted and if the kitten was still alive the next morning I'd call the fire department to come and rescue it .

Defeated, filthy and hungry we drove in silence from the dark of my farm down the hill towards the lights and noise of the village below and to Asher's home - an apartment above the local pub.

It was closing time as we arrived and the last few patrons were stumbling out, a motley crew of inebriated tradesmen - a plumber, a sign painter, a builder and one or two other gentlemen who didn't appear to be gainfully employed yet always had the price of a beer in their pockets.

Upon seeing our appearance they wanted to know what we'd been up to. We told them our sad tale, they looked drunkenly at one another and with one voice uttered, "NO! You mustn't give up, we are coming to help you!".

I was too tired to even argue and so it came to pass that at 12.30 the next morning the rescue mission reached its climax.

One drunk lay on top of the built-in cupboards in the bathroom holding my cosmetic mirror at an angle above the wall cavity. My solar lights were dangling down the hollow wall to illuminate the now silent, exhausted kitten.

Another drunk, on top of the ladder, and staring into the angled mirror so that he could see the kitten managed to lasso it with a device made from irrigation piping and the wires from my sound system (it never worked again).

As he eased the foul smelling kitten over the top of the wall and passed it gently to me tears of joy ran down my cheeks and shouts of exultation from the assembled gathering raised what was left of the bathroom roof.

I took the terrified kitten, whose eyes were barely open, and put her into my bra, next to my heart, and fell in love. She instantly fell asleep.

It's eleven years later and she's been next to my heart ever since, sleeping on my chest at night. My little Maisha, my treasure in the attic, who restored my love for life again.

P.S. Maisha is a Swahili word meaning "Full of life".

P.P.S. The morning after the great rescue the assorted patrons from the pub came and restored my cottage to its former glory - ceiling back in place, new plumbing, wall plastered and painted and a new attic door. This time one with keys!