We used to have a big furry black cat. He came to us as a stray kitten and judging by how paranoid he was, his previous home was probably not a happy one. Beside being scared of just about every thing, he had this obsession with tinsel from the Christmas tree.

That cat loved that tinsel. Every chance he got he would be under that tree chewing on tinsel. Since we didn’t think that chewing on that tinsel was healthy, we finally had to remove all of the tinsel from the lower branches of the tree.

Then one Christmas day, we noticed that the cat had an eight inch silver streamer hanging down just below his tail. As soon as we saw it, we had a good idea of what it was; tinsel from the tree. Apparently, all of the excitement from opening the gifts had dislodged some of the tinsel from the tree and the cat had, well, eaten it. Not knowing just how much tinsel was still in there, we decided that we needed to manually remove it.

As soon as he saw us moving towards him, his paranoia kicked in and he took off running. In the proud tradition of a bicycle in a Fourth of July parade, his streamer was waving in the breeze. Under the table, behind the sofa, across the living room, up the stairs and finally under my daughter’s bed.

Under the bed was his favorite den. My daughter stored a lot of stuff under the bed plus the bedspread hung down to the floor, so the cat could easily hide before our very eyes in the darkness. Shutting the bedroom door so there would not be any escapes, we started digging for the cat.

It took us about 10 minutes before we finally managed to grab the cat. It seems that the very items that hid the cat also blocked his escape route.

It took two of us to perform the task; one to hold the cat and the other to remove the tinsel. I held the cat as he was rather strong and could break away in a second. Kathy performed the deed. She grabbed the tinsel and slowly started pulling. After about a second or so, the cats eyes got big as saucers and after ten seconds, the tinsel was removed.

We released the cat and opened the door. But instead of running off on a mad dash, the cat, wishing to maintain his dignity, just wandered off slowly as if nothing had happened.