Dear Melissa:
 
>Poor Snoops was SO itchy before the surgery...when I held him and
>scratched him he even purred (kind of like a cat but shorter).  Well we
>got the pathology report back: Arteriovenous Fistula
>
>What is surprising is that the pathologist said that while these are
>common in dogs he had never seen one in a ferret before.  Has anyone else
>had one of these removed?  I'm certainly not complaining as surgical
>excision is curative and this is not a cancer.
 
When you mentioned small dark subcutaneous lump - I immediately thought
of a vascular tumor.  The difference between an AV-fistula and a benign
vascular tumor - a hemangioma is minimal, and in many cases, the two
terminologies may be interchangeable.
 
Hemangiomas are occasionally seen in ferrets (probably accounting for about
2% of skin tumors), and as the pathologist report said, are cured with
excision.
 
>I have cleaned litter pans daily since before the pregnancy (hubby
>travels so him doing it wasn't an option).  I have never worried about
>Toxoplasmosis because I work for a vet and figure that if I wasn't
>exposed prior to pregnancy it was a miracle.
 
Remember that the shedding of infective Toxo oocysts is only seen in cats.
Ferrets, like other warm-blooded animals can be infected by eating these
infective stages (other other stages in the uncooked meat of parasitize
animals), but because they are aberrant hosts (the cat is the only
definitive host of Toxo) - the life cycle will not be completed, and
infective stages will not be shed in the feces of ferrets.  So don't
worry about your ferrets, and don't eat raw cat meat!
 
With kindest regards,
Bruce Williams, dVM
[Posted in FML issue 3245]