"It sounds like a nursery rhyme, doesn't it?" quipped Sergeant Paul Skelton of the West Vancouver police. "At least we have a health-conscious bear on our hands."
When the woman returned to her home she was shocked to see the furry intruder.
"She discovered the bear had made its way into her kitchen through an open sliding-glass door," Mr Skelton told the Vancouver Province newspaper.
"It appeared to be a one- to two-year-old bear - a juvenile - within the kitchen enjoying some oatmeal it had obtained by breaking a ceramic food container. When she saw it, she did the right thing. She vacated the area and called us."
Despite the arrival of three of West Vancouver's finest, the bear would not budge.
"The bear didn't appear to be aggressive and wasn't destroying the house, so they just let it do what it was doing and eventually the bear decided to make its way out of the residence and down toward a forested gully," Mr Skelton said. "It ended the best it could."
Losses were limited to two ceramic food containers and "an amount of oatmeal".
Mr Skelton said last winter's heavy snowpack has resulted in North Shore bears coming out of hibernation later than usual this spring, resulting in a number of complaints late in the season.