I am not talking about anal retentiveness. I wish I was…

I am not talking in pornographic terms. I know, y’all are disappointed.

I am talking about my sweet little Ruby and her anal glands.

Good lord. She’s in pain. I knew she wasn’t quite right yesterday: she was overly needy and lethargic. She’s a little vacuum cleaner so I figured she’d just eaten something that didn’t agree with her, like a rock or a hot wheel.

But no. She waited until after all the vets were closed to start these other weird ass symptoms.

Like phantom yelping. She would be sound asleep and then suddenly, without any prompting from me, jump up and start this awful yelping and turning in circles.

This went on every 10 minutes for the next 5 hours.

I started researching. Who needs vet school when we have the internets?

Sure enough, it looks like chicky-poo has some blocked anal glands. I found instructions on how to express those glands and trust me, after 5 hours of painful phantom yelping, you’d try to do this yourself as well.

It was a total failure. So I took her to bed, where she spent the next hour yelping in my ear. She wouldn’t sleep down by my feet like she usually does. No, she had to be near my face. After an hour and massive hearing loss, Ruby spent the night in her cage. I closed my door, and slept like a baby.

We’re off to the vet this morning. Hopefully she’ll get her glands cleaned out and I’ll get my life back without my shadow.