Issue 149: july 2011

any  sense  of  po lit i cal  am bi gu ities  we  joy -

ously ex claimed Hal le lu jah and Allah Akbar 

in the same breath.  The mo men tary cel e -

bra tion far ex ceeded Can ada’s gold medal

win ning goal in the ice hockey final against

the United States dur ing the Van cou ver

Olym pics.    In di vid u ally  and  col lec tively  we

felt at least as good as I would imag ine a

Ger man hausfrau feel ing when find ing a

shirtless David Hasselhoff on her front

porch.  

Per haps a tiny piece of con science in -

side of me won dered whether our joy

about this fam ily re uni fi ca tion was a lit tle

over the top, given the real life mir a cles of 

fam ily  re uni fi ca tion  across  the  Berlin  Wall

in years gone by or even across the Ko -

rean di vide today.  But eu phoric mo ments

don’t lend them selves to main tain ing per -

spec tive, and we al lowed our selves to be

over come with this emo tional sum mitry. 

Of course, what goes up must surely

come back down, and this is true of emo -

tional eu pho ria as well.  The sec ond I

opened my car door, Pacco was gone. 

And then we re mem bered:  this cat does -

n’t re ally like us all that much, and in spite

of some move ment to ward get ting along

just be fore the great es cape a few weeks

ago, Pacco had at best tol er ated our pres -

ence in the house.  Given this, get ting

Pacco back into the house was going to

pres ent a whole new set of chal lenges. 

This bat tle was far from over.

We met twice a day as the fam ily war

coun cil:  the  mem ber ship  in cluded  prin ci -

pally my seven-year-old daugh ter and my

ten-year-old son as well as my self.  We did 

re port back to the re main der of the fam -

ily, but since we en coun tered mostly

skep ti cism, we wa tered those re ports

down in terms of chal lenges and in stead

pro vided  un abash edly  pos i tive,  al though

not en tirely true, ac counts of our bat tle

prog ress.  The eth ics for this pro cess

were nightly mod eled by the Fox News -

cast  cov er ing  other,  ap par ently  highly

suc cess ful,  war  op er a tions  in  dis tant

places.  At any rate, as a war coun cil we

pre oc cu pied  our selves  with  this  ques tion:   

how could we get Pacco into the safety of

our home given his clear de sire to avoid

us at all costs?  How could we catch him

for his own good, so that we could mould

him into the cat he ought to be?  Per haps

most im por tantly, how could we get to a

point where we could re-live the feel ing of 

hav ing ‘won’ some thing?

We started with a gen tle strat egy. 

Every morn ing, we put out a fully loaded

dish with cat food.  And every morn ing

Pacco would come on the porch and eat

the cat food.  But when ever we tried to

open the door to the house ever so gently 

so as to not scare him, he would take off

in flash.  This cat was as alert as any starv -

ing,  freez ing  and  res o lutely  non-com pli ant

cat could be.  We did feel good about

Pacco fi nally get ting some food, but in no

way did this get us any closer to get ting

him back into the house.  We needed to

up the ante.  Thank fully, a close friend of -

fered a so lu tion; he brought us a huge live

trap.  This is a cage with a trap door that

closes  when  the  un sus pect ing  an i mal  has

en tered the cage in order to get to some

food stra te gi cally placed at the back.  This

seemed like a bril liant idea; as it turned

out, it did have a minor flaw, which we

dis cov ered after hav ing trapped three Rac -

coons, one skunk, a whole fam ily of

squir rels and the cat that be longs to the

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neigh bor from down the

street.  The lat ter was not

amused, even though his damn

cat got a nice meal out of the

deal.

As time went by, our en thu -

si asm for get ting Pacco into the 

house was re placed with a cre -

ative re-fram ing of being cat

own ers  which  es sen tially  le git i -

mized our with drawal from the 

bat tle we now re al ized we

could not pos si bly win; amaz -

ingly, Fox News re ported

some thing  very  sim i lar  about

an other with drawal from bat tle 

some where else.  As a fam ily, we came to

the con clu sion that Pacco was an out door

cat, and we would con tinue to re cord our

sight ings of him as well as feed him every

morn ing, but we would cease our at -

tempts to catch him.  And so it came to be 

that our fam ily life slowly re turned to nor -

mal, with ev ery one going about their

busi ness and Pacco liv ing out side where it

was still cold, but at least he was now well 

fed each and every day.

As win ter gave way to spring, a new

prob lem emerged.  Spring in Muskoka is

typ i cally a very wet af fair, with all that

snow melt ing and fre quent rains.  It was

my daugh ter who pointed out that Pacco

must be very un com fort able in these wet

con di tions out side.  Thank fully, my ten-

year-old son and his friend quickly went to 

work in order to ad dress this issue.  The

re sult was Pacco’s House, built en tirely by 

two ten-year-olds and fea tur ing not only a 

wa ter proof  roof  but  also  in su la tion

through out.  Sure enough, Pacco moved

right into his new home and seemed enor -

mously comfortable there.

An other thing hap pens when spring

comes to Muskoka.  Other an i mals wake

up from their win ter sleeps, or begin to

re turn to the town from their for est hide -

outs.  Rac coons, Skunks, Por cu pines,

Foxes, Fish ers, Coy otes, Wolves and even

Bears are rel a tively com mon sights in

smaller towns in this area, and cats and

smaller dogs make for great meals for

these hun gry pred a tors.  It was n’t be fore

long that we re al ized that Pacco was no

lon ger get ting his food; other an i mals

were eat ing what ever we were putt ing

out for him, and Pacco was rel e gated to

watch ing from a safe dis tance.  The dan -

gers of ev ery day life were not enough,

how ever, to con vince Pacco to come to

us, to move back into the house.  Trust, or 

its ab sence, is far more pow er ful as a

motivator than fear and acute danger.

Think ing quickly and cre atively, I re con -

vened the fam ily war coun cil, this time

switch ing the chan nel from the Fox ap -

proach to the much more Ca na dian

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