Okay, the grossest thing that has ever happened to me in my life, happened yesterday (Friday).→[More:] I came home from work, suspecting nothing.

Our cat Bob wandered into my den, went "meow," and I picked him up. I felt something that shouldn't be there on my arm, and I realized he had a little piece of poop stuck to his back end... no big deal. Our other cat, Kayla, is a Persian, and has this problem if we don't keep her fur shaved down. This was a first for Bob, but I thought, oh well, he got something caught in his fur.

So I grabbed a paper towel while I was still holding him, reached back there, and tried to wipe it off. There was a weird stretchy feeling. The glob did not come off. I tipped him around and looked at his butt... omg, there was a dead, cat litter-encrusted WORM hanging from his anus.

I dropped him on the floor and did the heeby-jeeby dance. I started yelling like mygothlaundry during a rat removal. Bob stood there looking at me.

I grabbed a few more paper towels, and picked him back up... that little dangly bit not touching skin. I laid him back in my arm like you'd cradle a baby, and grasped the horrible little thing with my paper-toweled hand. And pulled, fast (not quite a yank, but fast).

Bob went "mwAAAH!" and leaped out of my arms. I don't think it hurt him- but it HAD to feel pretty weird. Meanwhile, I pulled over a foot and a half of tapeworm out of his butt, dropped it and the paper towels on the kitchen floor, and did the heeby-jeeby dance again. OMG I was so grossed out I was shaking.

About this time my partner got home from work. I was gibbering. Bob was fine, and I had wrapped the horrible worm thing in the paper towels. Partner refused to look at it (a good idea, since I am still grossed out at the memory of it). We agreed Bob needed to go to the vet the next morning, and he seemed un-fazed by the whole ordeal.

Then I'm going back to the kitchen and I feel something wet under my bare foot, and there's the last six inches of the fucking thing on my living room floor. I run screaming to the shower, washing my foot off and generally thinking this is NOT how I want to end my already stressful week. But there it is. Partner removes the worm segment since I have had all I can take by this point.

Partner takes Bob to the vet this morning (since I had to work) and also carries the worm (the original piece), still in its paper towel cocoon, inside a sandwich bag. The vets tell him it's no big deal, we'll give him a pill and he'll be fine, but then when they see the worm they flip out and ask if they can keep it as a specimen, since they've never seen one that large from a cat.

Now I am wondering how an indoor cat managed to acquire and grow such a monster tapeworm. The only thing I can figure is, when I feed our betta, Bob always comes begging as soon as I uncap the fish food. A couple of times, I've held the can down and he's licked up a couple of grains. From the smell of it, betta food is basically ground-up fish, so I guess one of those little grains had a tapeworm cyst in it, allowing it to grow to horrific size inside a well-fed cat. Argh.