Hello All,
 
Happy New Year!!!!!!!
 
Ok, so I finally got my book compiled by Muldoone today and once again I
read the story about Fiscus the ferret, and the one before the Rainbow
Bridge Poem which was about taking the time now to look into your
ferret's eyes, play with them, pet them, and get to know them.
 
Now, my oldest ferret Frankie will turn 3 this month.  My youngest, who
knows how old he is, we estimate based on his teeth between 9 months and
a year old.  He was the one that ran into a vacant townhouse in November
when the cleaning crew went in to clean and the maintenance guys called
us.  Well, Buddy is permanently ours now, and boy is he a handful, but
so loved.  He made number 9 for us.
 
Anyway, I hold my ferrets everyday, every single one of them.  I clean up
pooty every day, after every playpen and cage switch.  I feel like I love
them more than I have ever loved any other being in my life.  I dread the
day that I know is inevitable when I will have to say goodbye to them
until I can join them later in life.  I read the story about holding them
and paying more attention to them, and immediately I feel guilty.  Why?
 
Well, you see, we moved into our house Dec. 15.  We gave them their own
room-new carpet, so we tried to put linoleum down over top so we could
give them run of the room.  That failed miserably despite all that we
tried to do to get it to work.  So now, we've reverted back to all three
cages in the room along with a Martin's playpen on a piece of linoleum.
And why do I feel guilty even though I hold all of them at least once a
day and I play with them as much as I can and I make sure they have clean
cages and clean playpens with fun things to do?  Because I feel like when
we lived in our apartment and they were in our living room, we saw them
all the time.  They saw us all the time, now they're in a room and they
see us when we pass by, or when we come in to love on them, or when we
come in to switch playgroups.
 
We are going to set up our Marshalls playpen in our rec room so that when
we're down there watching tv, we can bring the playgroup down with us
and interact more with them.  That's nice, if our one group didn't have
really talented escape artists.  And I'm not kidding when I say they are
talented.  Believe me, we have a top to the playpen, one from Marshalls,
and we velcroed it.  They escaped.  Our ferret sitter used clamps to keep
it closed, they escaped.  Our ferret sitter used 40 clamps to keep it
closed-said it was like Fort Knox, they escaped.  The little buggers
escape too well.  If we let them out to run around, they tear at the
carpet.  Fooey, vinegar/water, nothing stops my little buggers.  They
have a crappy hit rate when they're not in their playpens/cages, and that
can be dealt with, tearing up new carpet that cost Mom and Dad $3000,
cannot be dealt with, because I don't like to punish them (time out in
the cage) for what they do naturally.
 
Anyway, so I'm one guilty feeling Momma right now.  My New Year's
Resolutions include:
 
-figuring out a way to make Momma feel less guilty, and my babies feel
 more loving and interaction with us by putting up that playpen I keep
 putting off.
 
-Figuring out a way to ferretproof better so the babies can have more
 roam of a level of the house.
 
-Going to church more (gotta please the in-laws, and let's be honest,
 we're having trouble getting pregnant, so it can't hurt to go right?)
 
-Not getting any more weasels...........my longest streak without
 acquiring anymore was 9 months, and that was 1.5 years ago that we
 broke that one.
 
Anyway, I hope you all love on your fuzzies tons, and never take them
for granted.  Happy New Year to you all.
 
Jennifer
[Posted in FML issue 5109]