I posted not long ago about my little girl with all the color variations,
who the vet believed to have suffered from aortic disfunction.  (I am
now, after talking some with Sukie, dead sure that is what the problem
was.)
 
As I said before, this little girl was only just under 3 when she passed.
She was always a very tiny girl, never topping a pound.  She was spunky
and a little devilish.  She started out a champaign color, and by the
time of her death was mostly cream-colored with sparsely grey guard
hairs, giving her a silver appearance.  She had a bi-color tail, white
front toes, a bib and a narrow blaze, and most strikingly, her mask was
extremely lopsided.  It gave her a scamp appearance that was simply
irresistable.  I loved her so, little lopsided scamp mask and all.
 
This is a picture of my Tasha as a kit.
http://www.geocities.com/lothruin/pictures/tasha.gif
(It's a geocities link, and they don't like external hyperlinks, so I
think you'll have to copy and paste it to see it.)  You can see her
colorations clearly in this picture, though it is before her first coat
change, which is when the dramatic lightening began.  Though it isn't
a closeup of her face, you ca see the lopsidedness of her mask pretty
clearly as well.  As she lightened up, this lopsidedness became more
and more pronounced.
 
After my ordeal with my girl, I will probably never be able to home a
ferret how bares a resemblance to her.  Partly from the emotional
scars her death left, and partly because I now know such markings and
colorations can lead to such tragic consequences, and I am neither
prepared to deal with that again emotionally, nor am I prepared to
support or endorse with my dollars breeding practices which cause such
devastating health problems.
 
Melissa Rotert
[Posted in FML issue 4692]