Greetings to all from Seattle!
 
Brenda: I am so sorry to hear about your Ursa.  I know how painful this must
be for you.  There is just no telling how cats and ferrets will get along.
My fuzzies generaly ignore the cats and the cats just sit on the couch or a
chair and swat the ferts heads when they pass by.  Rosie, however, (the
smallest of the ferts) will attack any cat that attacks her first.  She
won't give up until she has given him a good hard bite and the cat is
hissing and sitting wide-eyed on top of a shelf or chair back.  I guess our
felines are just easily intimidated.  Once again I am very sorry to hear
about your loss and look forward to hearing about your next ferret friend.
You aren't giving up on ferts are you?
 
Also for the general group approval here is a reposting of the 12 steps of
Alcoholics Anonymous as adapted for ferret owners (For those who are
unfamiliar this is in the beginning of chapter five in the "Big Book" of
Alcoholics Anonymous and is read at the start of most AA meetings):
 
Half measures availed us nothing.  We stood at the turning point.  We
asked for more ferrets with complete abandon.  Here are the steps we
took which are suggested as a program of co-habition.
 
Step 1:  We admitted that we were powerless over ferrets - that our
lives had become unmanageable.
 
Step 2:  Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves (ferrets)
was in charge of our lives.
 
Step 3:  Made a descision to give up and turn our will and our lives
over to the tyranny of ferrets as we understood them.
 
Step 4:  Made a searching and fearless inventory of our ferret's hiding
places.
 
Step 5:  Admitted to God, ourselves, and to another human being, the
exact nature of our ferret's wrongs.
 
Step 6:  Were entirely ready to remove all their poop from the corners.
 
Step 7:  Humbly asked Him to remove our desire to throttle the little
monsters when we caught them chewing up the only copy of our term paper
(proposal, bill, etc.).
 
Step 8:  Made a list of all people we had bored with the story of our
carpet shark's latest adventure (but he looked so cuuute!) and became
willing to make ammends to them all by giving them pictures of sleeping
ferrets (look how he's got his arm wrapped around her...they must be in
love).
 
Step 9:  Made direct ammends to such people wherever possible, except
when to do so would bore them or others unnecessarily.
 
Step 10:  Continued to keep an eye on the hiding places, hoping the car
keys would show up eventually.
 
Step 11:  Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our relationships
with our ferrets as we understood them, praying only for the strength to
play some more and the creativity to keep the ferts occupied.
 
Step 12:  Having had a realization that ferrets were the best thing
since family and friends we tried to carry this message to others and to
get as many more sharks as we could before our so's had a fit.
 
Many of us exclaimed, "What an order! I can't go through with it."  Do
not be discouraged.  No one among us has been able to maintain a sour
disposition in the face of a wardancing carpet shark.  We are not
sociopaths.  The point is, that we are willing to have our family grow
along ferret lines.  The principals we have set down are guides to
sanity.  We claim limited sanity and little perfection...  Our personal
adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:
 
(a)  That we were ferretaholics and could not manage our own lives.
 
(b)  That probably no human power could relieve us from our our ferret
obssesion.
 
(c)  That we really wouldn't want them to even if they could.
 
Hope this brightens someone's day.
 
Flip, Rosie, and Sparky
 
(with Paul shivering in the corner "no...no...don't poop
there...no...no...don't climb on that...")
 
--
It is easy to go down into Hell;  night and day the gates of dark death
stand wide; but to climb back up again, to retrace one's steps to the
open air, there lies the problem, the difficult task.
 
Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which
makes life seem so worth while to us now.  Cling to the thought that, in
God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have--the key to
life and happiness for others.  With it you can avert death and misery for
them.
[Posted in FML issue 1513]