Unsolicited product recommendation here...
 
Two of my three ferrets are poopieheads.  My eldest, Sprinkles, is
(sadly) in her declining years (she's 8-ish years old) and is now
experiencing some incontinence.  Pippin (the ferret with a pacemaker)
suffered some brain damage as a side effect of her heart condition and
simply can't be litterbox trained.
 
I have a full-size carpet shampooer that I run about once a month but
for "in-between" tasks it's a pain in the butt.  I had an older "Little
Green Machine" carpet spot cleaner which worked reasonably well but it
was still on the large side (about the size of a bag of potatoes).  It
finally died on me a couple of weeks ago, so I went to Sears with the
intention of buying the new version of the "Little Green Machine" (which
heats the cleaning solution, has a bigger scrubber, etc) for $100.  Thing
is, it's MUCH larger than my "Little Green Machine" was.
 
So instead for $40 picked up the "Dirt Devil Spot Scrubber"
(http://dirtdevil.com/products/shampooers/SE2800.asp).  It works REALLY
well, better than I thought it would and better than my old "Little Green
Machine" did -- and I suspect better than the new "Little Green Machine"
would have.  They give you a little bottle of cleaning solution which
goes quickly.  I've been using a combination of carpet shampoo, "Nature's
Miracle for Ferrets", and OxyClean (and water, of course) and it works
very nicely.  There's a powered rotating scrubber on the bottom which
makes getting rid of stubborn stains a matter of holding the scrubber on
top of it for awhile, then pulling back to suck it up.
 
Bad things: It's a little clumsy to hold.  It's not heavy but it's
bulkier than you'd think, about the size of a large "Dustbuster" vacuum.
It's pretty loud (imagine a power drill operating at full speed) but
still not as loud as my "Little Green Machine" was.  Some of the controls
are manual; the cleaner spray, for example, is a manual thumb trigger,
and you have to flip a switch to change from "scrub" mode to "vacuum"
mode.  The cleaning fluid reservoir isn't that big; you'll find yourself
refilling it more often than you'd think.  And the holding canister (for
the dirty water) looks deceptively large but needs to be emptied almost
as often as the cleaning fluid reservoir needs to be filled.
 
Still for $40, it's a great ferret spot remover.  If you have poopiehead
ferrets and are tired of blotting and/or hand scrubbing, this is a handy
little gadget to have.
[Posted in FML issue 4093]