All moved in! (the cat, that is)

Jonathan and I are learning how to take care of our things.  It's just a lot of property to be remembering where everything is all the time, and the status of its awayness.  In this case, it was a window.
At some point in our bug-bombing, odor-neutralizing, air refreshening of our basement, we opened the window.  We hadn't moved in yet and when we were over there walking around outside, we noticed the open window, shamed ourselves, closed it, and that was it.
Time goes by. We move in. More time goes by.  I go down to the basement to start cleaning it and see a pile of cat poop over by the fire stove.  This is where the story could get really long because of all the things I was thinking and wondering about it really being a cat and how it got in.  Of course, you already know how it got in because I spoiled it, but because of the time going by, I didn't think of that open window right away.
I have my dad come over because it was emergent in my head that this cat was here.  I tracked it, I'm proud to announce.  I saw a cat print in some thick dust by our furnace and then its eyes glowed at me when I peeked around the other side of the furnace. 
My dad came and scared it out, but I was frantic about it being wild and crazy and going deeper into our basement, so I scared it half to death by frantically hissing and waving a rake and it ran back to the furnace area, only where we couldn't get it.  He scared it, but it was smart and not moving.
I left the door open all day so it would run outside (it had a direct path, if it would just leave through that basement door).  It hid all day.  I felt bad that it was trapped because we left our window open.  Meanwhile, I shut it in that area of the basement and cleaned the cat-free half.  Cat hair, cat poop, cat pee all over.  It had made itself at home!
That evening we set a live trap with tuna fish in it.  oh wait, I forgot Nicole's favorite part.  To taunt it to go through the basement door that day, I doused a slice of organic sesame semolina bread with rice milk, warmed it on the stove (because we don't have a microwave yet) and added a dallop of brown sugar.  It didn't work.  The cat was not vegan, I guess?
So back to the live trap.  It sat their--tuna untouched--that whole night long, the next day, the next night... and then some time the next morning, some of the tuna went missing and the cat still was too.
I didn't want to rest that the cat just disappeared and was NOT happy with it lurking around (and other things) in our basement. 
So my dad and I were doing the final walk through to find it.  Jonathan had done an initial walk through and reported nothing.  I found it sitting on a shelf in the pantry.  Just looking at me like cats do.  Creepy.
So we got all geared up.  I promised not to hiss or even move and my dad got his thick gloves.  He went into the pantry and came out holding the cat.  We tried to cage it, but it heard the rattle and got away.  Very mysterious, cats are.  But we are homeowners (not cat owners and the cat is not a homeowner) and more importantly, we learned our lesson, at least about that window!

Thanks for reading.