#4 The Dogliest Detective and the Case of the Lost Cat
Toby was still flush with excitement from his first dip net fishing trip when he arrived at the Alaska Detective Agency on Monday morning. He immediately knew he was in for a tough day when his boss seemed to be waiting for him to show up.
"Toby you are almost late. No time for coffee." Captain McGruff snarled. "Our best client, Miss Havisham, has lost her cat. You need to go get it right away. Everyone else is busy on high priority cases."
Toby had heard stories of Miss Havisham's cat, as it gets lost every month or so. It isn't hard to find, but it is very hard to capture as it is very fast and cunning. Usually it takes four or five detectives to encircle the cat and capture it.
So Toby put his lunch and thermos cup in the break room, where all the other detectives were drinking coffee and trading fishing stories, and then headed out to find the cat. Sure enough the cat was easy to find, but Toby could never get close enough to catch it. He knew he had to corner it and it would give itself up, but otherwise the cat was just enjoying the chase.
Finally Toby had an idea from his fishing fun over the weekend. He had learned about a Pokémon phone app game that was like chasing a cat. So Toby used his canine charm to enlist the help of the neighborhood kids to "catch the Pokémon creatures". Toby used the strategy of spreading the kids out far from the cat, then slowly encircled the cat and cut off all escapes until the cat was finally cornered in an alleyway. With the kids one side of the alley and Toby on the other side, the cat finally gave itself up.
After returning the cat to Miss Havisham, Toby decided to reward his crew of helpers with snacks and spent the rest of the day playing GPS games with them.
To log this cache:
1. You need to help Toby capture the lost cat. Click on
Circle the Cat and follow the simple instructions to capture the cat. All you do is click on circles. Toby will have set up a few blocks for you when you start, and his strategy might help you. You may try as many times as you wish.
Warning: Many puzzle lovers will keep playing for hours after their first success because it is a fun puzzle game.
2. Once you have captured the cat at least once, go to Certitude and report on who caught the cat -- the keyword is "TobyAndMe" (without any spaces). Then Certitude will give you the final coordinates where the cache is hidden.
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.
Geocaching hint: On the Geocaching.com web page for this cache, you can click on the coordinates at the top and replace the fake virtual coordinates with the real coordinates. Then the website and some phone apps will use those real coordinates for mapping and guiding you to the cache.
3. Now go find the cache and sign the log scroll! If you run into any neighborhood kids, they might ask you if you are playing "Pokemon" or that "Geo-thing game".