DORCHESTER, Mass. (WHDH) -- You’ve heard of bats in the belfry, but what about cats in the ceiling?

It was a real problem for a Dorchester family.

“It’s funny. I feel bad for the kittens that they’ve been stuck, but they sound like they’re having a bunch of fun up there at nighttime. They’re going crazy. That’s all I hear up there scratching and playing around,” said Shanae Lawson.

She heard the pitter patter of paws for a week, not knowing what was up there. Then she heard the kittens meow in her ceiling.

It’s believed the mother cat squeezed through a hole in the roof and gave birth to the kittens in the attic.

Lawson and her cousin managed to catch one kitten, who they nicknamed Oreo, on Thursday.

“I felt bad. I looked up and was surprised to see two little paws in the cracks, like what in the world, how did they get up there?” said Lawson.

On Friday the Animal Rescue League was there to set up a humane trap by removing ceiling tiles inside Lawson’s closet.

“We can’t really get to them unless we were willing to destroy everything and we’d rather not do that, so for now we’re putting humane cat traps up there,” said Bill Tanguay of the Animal Rescue League.

Within an hour of the trap being set two more kittens were caught.

Lawson hopes that was the last of the litter and the kittens can all be adopted.