US News

CAT-A-COMBERS CRAWL; WALL-TO-WALL SEARCH FOR TRAPPED VILLAGE KITTY

It’s official: The scene around the Greenwich Village food store where Molly the cat has been trapped inside the walls has turned into a zoo.

Joining the pet psy chics, the animal rescuers, the curious children and the media circus, The Post sent a giant white mouse to lure Molly out yesterday, but all the efforts were in vain – the missing feline is nowhere to be found.

Against all odds, the miracle cat is still alive and mewing after 14 days inside the walls of British specialty food store Myers of Keswick. Throughout the day, workers tried luring Molly with humane traps full of catnip and fresh meat.

Desperate rescuers even turned to a pet psychic yester day hoping she might help snare the lost master mouser.

“I’m feeling her on the left side,” Maxine Albert told workers trying to lure Molly out from behind a brick wall in the 19th-century Greenwich Village building.

“She can’t move, she’s hurt,” added Albert, who also ministers to people.

Maybe they should have called Miss Cleo, as workers later determined the cat was likely somewhere else in the building.

The Post’s giant white mouse – who danced teasingly and squeaked in front of the basement door to catch the cat’s attention – had no more success, except in eliciting howls of laughter from the crowd.

“Oh, for sure, this is going to do it,” giggled neighbor Pamela LaBonne, 67.

“Damn, these mice in New York are getting big!” quipped passer-by Mary Edwards of Brooklyn.

But Abby Fisher, 6, doubted the mouse would smoke out Molly, since even little girls could figure out it was just a person in a costume.

Fisher, a tourist from North Carolina who just arrived for her first visit to the Big Apple, saw Molly’s plight on TV and rushed to offer her help.

“I just want to look in there to see if I could fit,” she said. “After the bricks are all out, I think I might be able to go in there.”

Six volunteers and city workers drilled dozens of holes through the 20-inch foundation of the building, racing against time to reach the spot from where Molly’s plaintive meows appeared to be coming.

But after digging out buckets of dirt and rocks and snaking a tiny camera behind the wall, they found no cat.

“I think she’s between the brick exterior wall and the finish wall of the first floor,” said volunteer Paul Harkin, an off-duty Buildings Department inspector. “But the owner won’t let us inside to cut open the wall.”

So Harkin, working with rescuers from Animal Care and Control, got permission from a woman in the apartment above the Hudson Street store to take apart some of her floorboards and snake the camera down the wall.

“I definitely still feel positive,” said rescuer Josh Schermer. “Cats are pretty resilient, and it rained three or four times in the last week. There’s also a good chance she got a mouse.”

brigitte.williams@nypost.com