Not just that, but the 13 cans of tuna really gave it away

The old expression has it that there is more than one way to skin a cat, but that only applies to people who would be interested in skinning a cat, and I hope they get seriously clawed.

But there must be more than one explanation when you get caught by the TSA trying to smuggle a cat through the check-in while concealed inside a carry-on bag.  An agent at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport was right on top of the situation when he saw little tufts of orange fur sticking out of a slightly-unzipped  suitcase. He cleverly deduced that something was up.

A quick x-ray later, and the TSA guy saw four paws and one tail, and that painted a pawtrait of feline problems.

As the bag went through the X-ray unit Nov. 16, the Transportation Security Administration agent was in for a surprise: Inside were four paws and one tail, and that adds up to one cat.  

I have to say, they will let an occasional boxcutter through the impregnable checkpoint, but they do not miss a chance for a witty remark about a stowaway cat. 

“On the bright side, the cat’s out of the bag,” a TSA spokesperson tweeted, quick as a wink, a week ago today. (No one was working at Twitter to rule on how funny this was.)

Not so fast, they said, and the passenger was paged to come back to the ticket counter. 

“The traveler said that the cat belonged to someone else in the household, implying that he was not aware that the cat was in the suitcase,” TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein said, as if she believed that tail tale.

“We call that a good CATch!” she also said. It's a regular comedy cavalcade with these cat-catchers.

So, the upshot is, the cat's name is "Smells," and he is back in the tender care of his owner, who says that "Smells must have crawled into the suitcase of a visiting friend."

I will go along with the part about him crawling into the bag. Zipping the bag up and taking it to the airport, now that's a whole 'nother story.  I'm not kitten.

Just hear meowt.