ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 16, 1996 TAG: 9603180041
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
note: below
A HUNGRY, PREGNANT pet, a locked door, a sea cruise, a frantic owner - and a happy ending.
Friday morning, Allan Schmaeman was thinking about breaking into his neighbors' house.
And he was freely telling the police about his plan. In fact, he was begging them to send an officer over to watch him do it.
Schmaeman is not a criminal. He's a cat owner - actually, he owns "quite a few."
"I won't specify how many," he'll say after you wipe your feet on a doormat with a cat pictured on it. "But we've got more than our share."
He's devoted to them all, so he was more than worried when Pete - a female short-hair whose name is pronounced "Petey" - disappeared 10 days ago from his Northwest Roanoke home. He looked all over.
But it wasn't until Thursday morning that he found her. He glanced across the street at his neighbors' basement window and saw something white. He squinted. It was Pete - on the wrong side of glass.
Pete was trapped inside and, Schmaeman learned, the neighbors were out of town. Nobody knew when they'd be back.
He was frantic. He assumed Pete, who's very pregnant, had been without food or water for more than a week.
He called the police; he called animal control officers; he called local animal-rights activists.
The police and animal control officers sympathized with his predicament. But they told him they simply couldn't break into someone else's home without permission.
As best Schmaeman could figure, Pete had gone into the neighbors' house March 6. He figures she got in through a break in a screen door and was trapped when the main wooden door was shut. Then the neighbors, a couple with small children but no pets, left town.
Thursday night, Schmaeman was able to push the wooden door open a crack and slip in food and water.
But the safety chain wouldn't let him open it enough to allow Pete - in her swollen, about-ready-to-drop-a-litter state - to squeeze through.
By Friday morning, the idea of committing "B&E for a cat" was becoming more and more real.
"I have no choice," he said. "This is a do-or-die situation today."
He thought Pete needed to get to a veterinarian as soon as possible.
He did some more checking and learned his neighbors were on a Caribbean cruise. It was unclear when they'd return.
He called the police again. He asked for an officer to come watch him while he cut the safety chain and got Pete.
Around 10 a.m., his cordless phone chirped. Animal control officers had located the father of one of his neighbors, and he was on the way with the key.
"Bless you!" Schmaeman said.
N.W. Reed showed up a few minutes later - with some bad news. He had had his son and daughter-in-law's spare key. But they'd taken it back recently. His daughter-in-law had said she'd left it under a rock out back.
There were lots of rocks out back. Hundreds of them, carefully laid around flower beds, around walkways, all over. Reed laughed. "Aren't any rocks around here, are there?" he said.
They started turning them over, one by one. Worms and dirt. No key.
An animal control officer showed up. He started looking under rocks, too.
Finally, Reed looked at Schmaeman and said, "You got a screwdriver?"
"No," Schmaeman said eagerly, "but I can get one."
"Get the biggest one you can get," Reed said.
Reed put an unsteady ladder up to a back window, climbed it and used Schmaeman's screwdriver to pry open a window.
He slid inside.
Then he opened the kitchen door. Schmaeman went down in the basement and snatched up Pete.
The ordeal was over. Except for cleaning up the mess the trapped cat left in the basement.
He took her to the vet, who said she's a bit underweight but otherwise OK.
"She's very lovable as usual," Schmaeman said.
Friday evening, he had one more thing to worry about - another missing cat. He said Tig, his favorite, had been missing for two days.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART/Staff Allan Schmaeman with Pete, hisby CNBpregnant cat, which he rescued from a vacationing neighbor's house.
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