My cat ate a rubber band

Question
My cat (Baby) is a total indoor cat. when she woke I gave her some ice water. She loves it! Has me trained well! I was watching her cough up what I thought was a hairball. It was a large fat rubber band. The kind they use for bunches of broccoli at the store. Scared the &^$@!! out of me!!! In our 5 years together nothing like this has happened. Not even close. It could kill a human. My gosh what, why did this happen? I'm freaking out!!! Any answer please!!!              Thanks!!!  

Answer
Well its a good thing she coughed it up!  Try your best to
keep things off the floor that a cat might play with and
chew on and even swallow.  My cat will even try to get
paper out of the trash and eat it! Don't leave any trash can out that she can get into.  Try to make sure that any string, paper, (rubber bands), bottle caps, milk rings..even pens (my cat knocked a pen on the floor and chewed the end with the ink!) make sure she can't get to
wires and chew on them or her fate will be worse than the rubber band. Umm..twist ties... Keep all these things off
the floor perhaps do a thorough vacuuming under furniture too for peace of mind.  Like I said before..make sure she
can't get into trash
Cats are like babies they chew on stuff and inadvertently
end up swallowing it  I have to keep xmas ribbon string
out of the house or my cat will eat it
 Hmm.. maybe if you bought her some of that cat grass
(walmart sells it too..you have to grow it and it only takes 3 days or so) or Petsmart and Petco have fresh grass
ready to take home.. just maybe she will enjoy it and satisfy her need to chew on something   Maybe you can check the pet store too for *safe* toys for her to play with (if in doubt, ask the salesperson..) the toys should be ones that she can play with by herself and you dont have to worry about her eating pieces of it   I bought little mice
for my cat to play with and she ended up eating the tails
off of them and threw them up!!! So THAT did NOT work out
(what was I thinking??)

Thanks for the question.