impacted anal glands?

rad65

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I've been noticing lately that my older cat, Memphis, has two black dots, almost like really tiny scabs, on the sides of his anus. He's the type of cat to stick his butt directly in your face when he wants you to scratch his butt, so I know that's not how he's always looked. I was reading about impacted anal glands, and I saw that that was one of the signs. However, he doesn't exhibit any other signs such as a strong smell (there's actually no smell; he's always been my extra clean boy) or scooting across the floor. Actually, his behavior is completely unchanged and he never shows any signs of discomfort.

So I'm wondering, do the little black scab-looking things mean his glands need to be expressed or not? The dots are very small, almost unnoticeable until you're 2 or 3 feet away from him. Most of the sites I read mentioned rice-sized scabs being a sign, but these are not even on the same order of size as a grain of rice, more along the size of a pinhead. I don't particularly feel like sticking a camera up to my cat's anus considering how close I'd have to get for the dots to even show up, and I doubt anyone wants to see that, so I hope this description is good enough.
 
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mrsgreenjeens

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Sorry, even though Callie just went thru having a ruptured anal gland, I'm still pretty much in the dark in this subject.  Guess I really need to learn more about it, which I hope to do when we go for her follow up exam this Friday.  But she didn't exhibit any symptoms at all until it burst, except she just wasn't eating like normal.  I had no clue she had a problem...just thought she was being fussy about her food.  (I'm obviously a terrible meowmy
)
 
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