Hello Fellow Ferret Folks:
 
    I thought all of you might be interested in our most recent ferret news.
 
    We have 7 of the carpet sharks, and about a month ago one of our kids
(a 5-year old neutered male named Zeb) began to lose his hair fairly
rapdily.  We took him to the vet, who diagnosed him with a an enlarged
spleen and thought that *possibly* he was getting too high a protein diet.
She suggested we change his diet and bring him back in a month for a
checkup.
 
    Well, we took him back in last week and his spleen was larger, he'd
lost some weight, and the hair loss was worse.  We scheduled him for
surgery this past Tuesday.
 
    When the vet got inside she found a.) Zeb's spleen was both enlarged
and dotted with cancerous growths; b.) Zeb's pancreas was cancerous; and
c.) Zeb had a large mass of cancer (about the size of a marble) against his
abdominal wall.  Everything came out.  The tests haven't come back yet, but
she thinks they were benign.
 
    As of tonight he's doing well and has regained some of his energy.
We're watching him very closely due to the amount of matter pulled out of
him and the fact that he lost a lot of his body fat reserves when she took
out the cancerous mass on his abdominal wall.  He's been up and about more
today, and is asking to see his litter-mates; we're going to allow some
supervised visitations tonight.  We think he's going to be okay.
 
    This is pretty much the worst thing to happen to any of our kids,
although we knew that with 7 weasels we'd have problems sooner or later.
Thank the Maker we found it when we did.
 
    It's amazing how you'll do anything for your "kids", isn't it?
 
 
Steven and Colleen
Continually Matching Wits with Missy, Newone, Zebulon Pike, Minx,
                               Slinky, Puck, and Ripple
                               (not to mention our two 'guest ferrets')
                               Scamp and Taz
[Posted in FML issue 1199]