Last night we were sitting around watching Entourage when Murray came stumbling out of our bedroom. Toby Joe looked down at him and said, “What’s that in his mouth?”

When I put my hand up to his face I discovered a lot of moisture. Murray appeared to be foaming at the mouth.

This has happened to Murray before, but not for a very long time. When Murray was a baby he had a pretty bad case of ringworm. We had to give him these awful sulfur baths to try and kill the fungi.

I hated putting Murray through these baths, partly because of the smell (I was 7 months pregnant at the time) but mostly because Murray is such a happy creature and putting him through this made him look so forlorn. He’d look up at us and his eyes would ask, “Why are you doing this to me?”

It was very difficult. The thing that always gets me with animals, particularly cats, is that you can’t tell them that what you’re putting them through is for their own good. With a kid, you’re eventually given the chance to explain it, so even if it’s rough at first, someday they’ll make sense of it. But with a pet? They never understand. And I hate that.

But I digress.

Instead of putting him through the sulfur baths all the time, I often opted for the topical ointment as much as possible. And that worked for the first few weeks that he lived with us. But then one day I applied some to a big spot on his neck and he began to foam at the mouth. It was terrible! I called the vet immediately to find out what was happening. She told me it was ick mouth (or something like that) and went on to say that cats do this whenever they’re nauseated or poisoned and that I must stop using the ointment immediately.

It was back to the sulfur baths for poor Murray.

I’m not sure if it was his immune system that finally caught up, or if we sulfured it to death, but eventually the ringworm left our lives forever.

So, last night whenever my fuzzy friend came wandering out of our bedroom, I knew something was wrong. It’s not every day a cat foams at the mouth. Naturally, I freaked out.

As I watched another drop of foam fall from his mouth, he backed away from it and made a gagging sound. I thought he might be dying. But a few seconds later, a gummed up rubber band fell to the floor with a splat.

I have no idea where he got a rubber band; we’re usually very cautious given the number of times he’s had us in the ER for something similar. But I guess this one slipped through our watchful eye somehow.

This cat is either going to lead to the death of me or to the death of our bank account.

Edited to add: I could really stand to proofread this stuff before pushing it live. This post is/was an absolute mess. Forgive me for that. So much going on, yet not enough of that includes sleep.