My calico, Piper, has been licking her butt more than usual in the past couple of days, or at least that’s what I thought she was doing.
A few minutes ago I lifted her up and discovered she has an open sore about a centimeter to the left of her anus, at the base of her tail. It’s big; bigger than an eraser tip, but smaller than a dime, and there’s a cavity behind it.
It doesn’t look like a bite from one of her brothers and I don’t know how else it could have happened. Her behavior is otherwise unchanged.
What’s wrong? I’ll take her to the vet if I need to, but as I’m currently unemployed I don’t want to panic until it’s warranted.
Could it be an anal gland problem? My Luna had those for a while. The vet can express the anal glands. It’s not too involved a procedure (or at least it wasn’t for us), but the cat won’t like it.
Sounds like an anal gland abscess. The anal glands sit at about 4 o’clock and 8 o’clock next the anus with a small opening in the anus. If that opening gets clogged they can become infected and eventually abscess out. We see them more in small dogs but it can happen to cats, too.
The other possibility is just a plain old cat bite abscess but the location sounds more like a anal gland.
In either case you do need to see the vet to get it cleaned out and have the other gland expressed and the cat put on some antibiotics so it can heal.
That sounds like a vet issue. I wouldn’t put it off, it could be serious. Call around to different vets and your local humane society and explain your situation. See if there is a low-cost program or someone willing to work with you on a payment program, etc.
Is it caused by a dirty litter box? I know I don’t clean mine as much as I should. And is the infection likely to spread to her brothers (three cats total, all littermates)?
Another vote for anal gland infection and for going to the vet now. AFAIK the dirty litter box probably isn’t the cause, but you don’t want your cat to get contaminants into the wound.
No. It’s pretty much an individual thing. Something may cause the texture of an animal’s anal gland contents to change causing it to clog up the duct or the animal may always have very thick secretions and they just happened to clog up the duct. The duct is very small so it’s not that hard for it to get clogged. Most animals express their anal glands a little when they defecate. Fear can also cause them to express the glands. So they need to be able to express the goop in there otherwise it backs up and you get an abscess.
You do really need to get her seen by a vet though. It’s painful and she may put off defecating because it hurts and then you have other problems. You also don’t want the infection to spread around the area or the other duct to clog and then she has matching abscesses.
If money is a big concern, as your vet about Care Credit. Most veterinary clinics take it. It is basically a credit card that only works for veterinary and dentistry things. Approval is quick and they have no-interest payment options if you can cover the balance in 3 months. If you need longer, the interest rate is somewhere around 18%, which is better than a lot of my credit cards.
I took her to the vet (and for the first time in her life, she didn’t fight me when I put her in her carrier). She had an infected anal gland that had abscessed, causing the hole I saw.
The doctor expressed the glands, cleaned around the area, and then gave her a shot.
She told me not to worry, that this wasn’t a result of neglect, it won’t spread to my other cats, and that she isn’t in much pain anymore.
We left with a course of antibiotics (which we start tomorrow evening). The cost was right around a hundred bucks, which is not nearly as bad as I’d feared.
Once she’s all healed up and good, she’ll probably need her anal glands expressed periodically, to keep this from happening again. Most groomers or vets are happy to do this for a small fee, or you can ask them to show you how. Make sure you wear disposable gloves!
The vet said it’s uncommon (not rare) for cats to have anal gland problems, and that they occur more often in dogs. Of course I’ll do whatever’s necessary to keep her well. She’s over ten years old, and this is the first time she’s ever been sick.
If asked about our meeting this afternoon, the vet will probably remember me as “that girl who wouldn’t stop crying.”