The phone rang.

"Hey, can I get you to do something for me?"I put down my cereal. "Sure," I said. "What's up?"

"Have you seen Edmund this morning?"

My mind raced. Oh, dear, had Edmund gotten himself stuck in a closet again? This could be bad. He tends to get destructive if he gets shut in somewhere. "Yeah, he's right here in front of me, looking at me. Why?"

"Would you ... would you take a look and see if there's something still dangling from ... his ass?"

To which I responded with the only possible reply: "What?!?"

Jeff-the-patient says again, "Look at the cat and see if there's something still dangling from his ass."

I followed the cat around for a moment, and eventually, he presented his hind end to me. Sure enough, there it was...something. Dangling. Jiggling, actually. "Oh God. There's really something there."

At which point, I'd like to add, my mind just snapped. Then I sat on the couch and howled for about two minutes. When Jeff was able to get a word in edgewise through the howling and cackling, he asked, "Does it look like a rubber band to you?"

I looked. Yeah, that would explain the jiggling. My cat had a rubber band dangling out of his ass.

"Do you have any rubber gloves left? You could maybe put one of those on and try to grab it. I tried to get it this morning, but Edmund was having none of that."

(Oh, I bet.)

"No. I used up the last of the rubber gloves the last time I made salsa and had to chop all those jalapeños."

"I guess it's just going to have to hang there and ... uh ... work its way out."

"It'll probably take care of itself after their lunch feeding." We exchanged pleasantries and plans for the day and hung up.

Then I looked at the cat again, watched him walk across the room with that rubber band jiggling, and put my head in my hands and just bawled with laughter.

What else can you do?

We've really got to have a talk with that cat about his extracurricular eating habits. This is just insane.