Longtime readers will remember the February 2004 entry "extracurricular eating," which until today stood alone as the oddest event we've ever dealt with while attempting to 'parent' our very large, very STUPID six-year-old cats.

Have I mentioned lately that they're STUPID?

So, as lots of you know, I'm taking Lunesta to browbeat my chronic (ten years plus) insomnia. Few people have actually seen me after taking my medication, because I'm not very comfortable with the idea of people seeing me shift that quickly from full wakefulness to childlike confusion to deep sleep. (As one friend described it, it was like watching my personality be turned off, not unlike a light switch.) Once the medications are taken, and I fall asleep, little short of a Cat5 or an atomic bomb will awaken me.

So that should tell you about the level of the hideous, awful noise that I heard—by the sheer fact that I heard it. I sat up, groggy, confused, but knowing without doubt that one of my cats was in the bedroom, possibly in the bed with me, hurking up the biggest, most ungodly hairball known to mankind. Tenzing was draped across my legs, sleeping soundly (how could he sleep through that?) so it must be Edmund.

I cannot abide the smell of cat vomit. It makes me, unsurprisingly, nauseous. (Thus they always vomit when I'm the only one around to clean it up. Maybe they think they're giving me presents. Who knows.) I flipped on the bedroom light and tried to find the offending pile, so that I could clean it up and go back to bed.

I couldn't find the damn thing. I could smell it, but I couldn't see it, and I was so foggy from the Lunesta that I doubted I would be able to focus enough to find it before morning. I grabbed a blanket and slept on the couch for the rest of the night, promising myself that when I was awake and coherent, I'd search in daylight and take care of it.

Sure enough, with a bit more looking, I found the offending little pile.

Edmund had eaten about a two-foot strand of narrow white ribbon. Swallowed it whole, actually. As I was making the "ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!" face while disposing of the remains, I noticed that it didn't even have teeth marks on it, leading me to think he didn't even bother to chew it.

My cat is stupid. RELENTLESSLY stupid.

Did he think this was food? Did he think it was tasty? At what point might it have occurred to him that perhaps this wasn't the best thing to be eating—one foot? Two feet?

Perhaps I should laminate the cat. It's either that or the rest of the house, and the cat is slightly smaller, albeit not by much.