Happy Easter everyone!!!
 
After weeks of waiting for my ferret license and another week of waiting for
the ferrets at the shelter to get over their colds :-(, we've got fuzzies!
My son Kenny (age 8) and I (age:older) adopted a pair of ?MF(blue tattoos),
spayed, descented, litter trained, nippy, lovable 8 month old ferrets.  They
were cagemates, given to the shelter as a pair after the young (8) girl who
had them became afraid of them (didn't know how to handle the little
nippers, I guess :-( ...) So we get to skip the dominance fighting thing
with Katie and Polly.  They are almost perfectly matched 'chocolate
standards'.  (I think.)
 
Katie is a bit of a carpet shark, and she let us know this *before* we got
home by digging at upholstery of the passenger seat thru the cage.  That was
easily remedied by having Kenny move his seat forward a few more inches.  At
home a squirt bottle is fairly effective, but I'll have to put down runners
or other covering for the long term.  For now, one way to tell the two
virtual twins apart when the'yre out is by behavior, (or which one is
soggy).
 
Once home, they were released into their (mostly) ferret proofed room (is
'completely ferret proofed' considered an oxymoron??)', with supervision to
see what they might get into.  They proceeded to explore everything, and
burrow under/in everything they could-under the litter pan and food dish,
flipping their little pup tent several inches in the air, crawling into the
bag of ferret litter ('Contains 10% real ferrets!'), and running thru the
dryer tubing and the two connected cages that they will live in when their
pet humans are not around.  I'll get more lenient about leaving them loose
in the room unsupervised when I'm comfortable it's safe for them.  Actually,
my main concern is the possibility they'll get on the table in the room, on
which is a tank with two Bahama anoles (read: snack sized lizards), and
several containers with mealworm cultures (snack sized grubs for the
anoles).  If they start digging in the mealworm cultures, I'll have
mealworms of assorted sizes flung to the far corners of the rug, a scenerio
I'd rather avoid.  (Yeah, I know, I just need to move those out of the
room!)
 
They are 100% consistant with the litter box.  They use it 100% when they
and the box are in the cage.  On Friday (yesterday) I left the litterbox in
the cage with the cage open and them loose in the room, they failed to use
it 100%.  Now that they've 'trained' me as to which area is acceptable
outside the cage, I put the box there when I let them out.  That works fine.
 
They love to lick water drops off my still-damp hands after I've washed
them.  Also, since I read in this mornings FML about the benefits of hand
feeding, I thought I'd give that a try.  While Polly munched out of the food
bowl, I hand fed three pieces of 8 in 1 to Katie.  With each piece, she came
to the door, gently took the food I offered, took it back inside...and
deposited it into the food bowl!  :-)
 
One new thing I've learned about ferret behavior: a piece of kibble which
has fallen through the wire on the bottom of the cage is considered far more
desirable than the kibble still in the bowl!
 
The cages are carpeted, except for the bottom level of the two level (food
and water goes there, so it's lined with newspaper and towels.), and the
ramp.  I want to glue down carpet on the ramp so they won't get their feet
caught in it.  Can someone please recommend a good adhesive to use for this?
(I'd rather ask here than in the hardware store, considering what I'm doing
with it...) TIA, and...
 
Hugs to all the fuzzies!
 
Ilena (the adult human)
Kenny (the child human)
Katie & Polly (the little nippers)
Jennie & Gerry (the anoles)
(The mealworms don't get names.)
[Posted in FML issue 1887]