“Hey… what’s going on with Archie’s… boy area? Didn’t we just have that removed like… yesterday?”

“Um… yeah.”

“So I’m not like a testicle guru or anything, being that I’m not in possession of a pair but shouldn’t they be, you know, not there anymore? What’s with that big black swollen thing?”

“The vet said that his surgery was unusually traumatic because he had a lot of scar tissue on one of his balls and so this would probably happen. She said to use warm compresses and try and keep him from licking the… area.”

“Seriously? So I need to just hold him down and let me put a hot towel on his nonexistent balls while trying to keep his mouth away from them? Is it just me or does that sound vaguely like one of those truck-stop adjacent massage parlors?”

“Oh honey. If it were a roadside massage parlor, this story would have had a much happier ending for him.”

(For the record… he’s fine. I’ve panicked and called the vet more than once and things like “It looks like a giant rotten plum swinging around back there!” and “But I thought you just took it all out of there” may or may not have been said. Archie is running around with his big black empty ball sack like all is right with the world and my vet wants to enroll me in a sex ed 101 class. So I’d say we’re almost back to normal…)