Our male ferret, Toby, was fixed and descented in mid November. About two weeks ago, I noticed that he seemed to have a slight swelling on one side of his anus. He wasn't complaining of anything, so I figgered I was overreacting. Over the course of the next couple of days, the swelling got considerably larger - being brought forceably to our attention by Toby making noises when he used his litter box. Well, our Ferret-specialist vet was out of town for a week, but we decided that it couldn't wait. Fortunately, the emergency clinic was able to recommend another vet who was familiar with ferrets. The vet then opened him up and cleaned out the abcess which had even extended somewhat down Toby's tail. He had never seen anything like it before. There didn't seem to be any obvious connection with the descenting. Anyways, poor Toby now has 2 inches of stitches in his behind... He's still not perfectly comfortable, but his natural exuberance is still shining through. It's healing up nicely. The worst part was spraying a 1 in 10 mixture of Dettol on his behind... The fact that my wife and I were cringing in sympathy didn't help one bit. Nor did he like the Banana-flavoured antibiotics. If it had been Nicia mind you, we would have had severe trouble making sure she didn't eat the bottle, syringe and our fingers.... [Posted in FML 0007]