>I dropped by my home briefly a month ago to discover that one of my ferrets
>had developed a cataract in one of his eyes.  He is only a little more than
>one year old and is a "breeder ferret" who I expect to live for quite a few
>more years.
 
By "breeder" ferret do you mean you intend to use him as a stud??  I'm not a
breeder, so maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that cataracts in a ferret
that young is a genetic quality.  I think it would be unwise, not to mention
unfair, to breed him if this is the case.  Blind ferrets adapt pretty well
in my experience, although they tend to move a little slower.  But I still
think that it wouldn't be all that ethical to breed an animal with a genetic
deformity like that.
 
My Creative Writing teacher gave us an assignment to write a descriptive
passage about an animal during a non-sleeping time in it's life.  Wow, am I
lucky or what?  I sat down and watched my business of ferrets this morning
and wrote the entire thing in about 20 minutes.  The ferret gods must be
watching over me...
I hope they are watching over my Ancient Fang as well, since he seems to be
rapidly going downhill these last few weeks.  (By the way, TAF also has
cataracts which he recently developed in his 6th year of life.  He's pretty
much blind by this point.  Poor skinny blind ferret with bad, bad breath...)
Sheena
Ferrets & Friends Club & Rescue E-Mail:  [log in to unmask]
"dedicated to the preservation of the domestic ferret as a
 household pet", a no-kill, not-for-profit ferret facility.
[Posted in FML issue 1310]