I would have ripped a wall out.

But would I have ripped a wall out because I can imagine being a cat stuck headfirst down a heating duct while in active labor? Or would it have been because I can imagine the eventual smell if I didn't?

		Brian David covers the western suburbs and Beaver County for the Post-Gazette (bdavid@post-gazette.com).

This most dramatic chapter in the tenure of Oreo the Cat started as we were minutes from leaving for my son's fifth-grade band concert. Oreo was sprawled on the floor, eyes glazed over and round belly twitching. A veterinarian I am not, but it took no genius to say, "I do believe we are soon to be host to kittens."

To safeguard Oreo from her fellow feline and blood enemy, Mod, and the sweet but clumsy golden retriever, Jake, we shut her in the third-floor bathroom.

My stepson, an Animal Planet fanatic, was first up the stairs when we got home. "She's not here," he said.

That, of course, could not be.

"She must have gone in that hole," my wife said, pointing at the maw of the hot-air duct, still uncovered a year post-construction.

I refused to believe it, pulling out drawers as if Oreo had somehow climbed in and closed them. Then Mod trotted up to the hot air duct and hissed in pure hatred.

"She's in there," my wife said.

For the space of three heartbeats we all stood there. Then we scattered, each mind reeling with its own dark vision.

You must understand: I am not an animal person. I never was. Mod, however, came with my wife, and I like my wife. Then my stepson started spending hours with the neighbors' puppy and learning fun new words from their kids. So we got Jake.

Next came Reese, a cat who showed up convinced that she lived with us. The kids agreed, I did not, and we engaged in a great game of "let her in, throw her out" until learning that she belonged to the puppy-owning neighbors, which brought the children to the verge of a rock-throwing war.

As it turned out, though, Reese was just a scout, distracting me while Oreo slipped by.

Oreo was a stray, death-skinny with fur clumped in huge mats, so pathetic we started leaving her food. When the neighbor kids hauled Reese off in a box, there was Oreo, ready to fill the void.

And so I found myself feeding three animals, wondering where exactly Oreo was going to the bathroom (the answer, I later discovered, was "behind the furnace") and doing acrobatics going through doors, keeping Jake inside and the escaped-and-returned Reese outside.

Then Oreo, already swelling amidships and achieving a Billy Idol look due to lost clumps of matted hair, started limping.

The vet said it was a sprain, but could not be treated due to her, um, "delicate" condition.

My wife -- who is in a, um, "delicate" condition herself -- loved the three-legged cat, who could only drag herself a few pathetic yards before flopping down in contorted agony because of a belly quickly exceeding the total sum size of the rest of her body parts.

"I know just how she feels. All she wants to do is sleep, and she can't get comfortable."

And so when she -- Oreo, not my wife -- went into labor, we cared for her by locking her in an unfamiliar room with a perfect escape hatch that doubled as a trap. Yes, we're smart people.

In my mind Oreo had dragged herself through the duct to the wall and started a three-story plunge into darkness. She was either dead where the duct reached the basement or stuck halfway, upside down, in claustrophobic panic as her body involuntarily squeezed out kittens.

It was a motivating vision.

The duct sounded hollow where it reached the basement, so I dashed to the first floor, thumped the wall. There was no meowing, no scratching.

My daughter caught up as I poked into the second-floor crawl space. "Where do the ducts go? Would she be in the furnace? Are you going to tear the wall out?"

I ignored her, trying to focus. The ducts were too narrow; she must be somewhere above. I had seen the bathroom get built; there was access to the ducts ...

Wordless, I scrambled to the third floor and started yanking leftover drywall out of the way, then crawled into the space behind the bathroom's back wall.

There was a distinct bulge in the hot-air line.

The bulge mewed.

"I need some scissors!" I called out, scrabbling at the tape with my fingernails. "It's OK, kitty," I said to the bulge.

Hands poked a pocketknife and a flashlight at me. "He could be on 'Animal Precinct,' " my stepson's voice said.

The tape came loose. I extracted Oreo from the line, backed out of the crawl space, and turned her over to my daughter.

"What's 'Animal Precinct'?" I asked my wife. She looked at me, her eyes alight.

"It's this show on Animal Planet where ASPCA agents rescue cats from under floors and stuff. You have no idea. You're his hero right now."

Heroism is, of course, a short-lived thing. My stepson's back to his standard, wary, "you're not my dad" stance. Which is fine; I'm not.

Oreo is busy growing new fur and nursing five kittens. She had stopped her labor -- they can do that, apparently -- and bore them three days later behind the gold couch in the dining room.

Reese still lurks outside trying to get in; Jake still lurks inside trying to get out. Mod's halfway through Month Two of her foul mood. There's a nasty smell coming from behind the furnace.

But it's OK. I'm a hero.