Nina came to us in June of 2002. I had been posting on the Ferret Store
forums for the most part back then, and heard of a ferret who some
crooks had dumped in a dumpster behind a Petco, after robbing a Petco
delivery truck. The kind woman, who took her initially, found that she
did not get along with her other ferrets so offered her to a good home
at TFS forums (I think, or it may have been on the FML). This lady had
the AIM of sjoquist, if you are out there somewhere, from Connecticut.
I had been tossing around the idea of getting a third ferret in my
head (I had already gotten my first two in rapid succession 2 months
earlier, so I was not sure if it was the wisest thing to do) but
something called out to me so I went ahead and agreed to drive from NJ
to Connecticut with a friend, to meet this woman at a rest stop and
take [then] Ariel into my possession. She was a little silver cutie,
and I instantly fell in love. When we arrived home, she hissed a bit,
but seemed to rapidly get along just fine with me others. I shortly
thereafter changed her name to Nina. Nina was never really a 'peoples'
ferret, not really appreciating the finer petting or cozy-ing in life.
She got along much better with other ferrets than she necessarily did
with people, and preferred a hammock or a crinkle sack to a lap any
day. She was quite notorious for taking a good lick-lick-chomp on your
arm or the space between your thumb and pointer finger, and whoa-behold
if she got a hold of a bare ankle. At the same time, over the years she
became quite good at learning to give kisses on command, and when you
picked her up and demanded some love, she would lick your face for
hours, never knowing when to stop she would just keep on licking. She
also went bonkers for the worst people foods; cheese sauce, tartar
sauce, mayonnaise, tomato sauce, bread, American cheese, French fries-
if it came from a fast food place, Nina was devouring it. Nina was my
only ferret out of 6 who never had a surgery or medical condition save
for a little diarrhea once in a while. I thought she might live forever
until early March when I found her shivering and dazing out one
evening. When we rushed her to an emergency on-call ferret vet, an
x-ray was taken and we learned she had many, many little calcified
tumors all over her abdomen, They were so tiny but so many, the vet
stopped counting at 20. The next day, unable to be stabilized on pain
meds, our regular beloved ferret vet recommended we put her down that
day. I took her home with the intention of calling a vet I had heard
did home-visit euthanasia, but decided to give it one last stab at
stabilizing her. To our great surprise and shock, Nina stabilized very
well and went on to live 6 more weeks of eating whatever she wanted,
sleeping whatever she wanted and 'hunting' the poop out of her little
plaid stuffed bunny rabbit. Again I thought she might just shock us all
and live forever somehow. Alas, that was not to be, and after a short
fight with much worse symptoms, which we later learned was due to the
metastasized tumors spreading all over her chest and lungs this time,
she succumbed to her battle with cancer last night, Thursday April 10,
in her favorite hammock with her 3 other ferret siblings on top of her
(for all we know they took matters into their own hands and smothered
her!). I wish it was not to be, and so does her little Nurse, Lucy,
who never left her side these final days as she sensed something was
very wrong with her only 'sister'.

We will always love you Nina, probably way more than you even loved
us, being you were such a loner. I will never forget annoying you by
scratching behind your ears in the morning, or your sweet kisses one
could coax out of you once in a while. I hope you find Franklin and
Linus well and happy up there, and you know how incredibly much John
and I will always miss you.

Love
Cheryl

[Posted in FML 6299]