Ferrets--mine and others'--are always a huge part of my life... but...
well, these last few days have been crazy.  First off, I work in a pet
store.  I consider it a good one; we take good care of our critters, don't
sell dogs or cats, all that.  We do sell ferrets from MF, which we all feel
a little strange about, but they sell very quickly--huge demand around
here--and, as far as we know, there isn't a local breeder.  All our other
animals are raised locally.  Anyway, most of us own at least two of the
little critters ourselves.  My oldest (Molly, male, six years old) isn't in
the best of health.  We've only had him for half a year; sometime before
that, he had his spleen removed.  Shortly after the spleen was removed, the
hair on his tail fell out, but grew back in.  His owner didn't have much
more information than that.  He's very thin, and his coat isn't in great
shape, although it's gotten a lot better than it was since we took him off
of cheap cat food.  We presently feed Nutro Max Cat kitten food, and have
some very sleek fuzzies.  Anyway, he's exhibiting some aggression toward
anything else with four legs, not too unusual for a critter who was an only
ferret for almost four years of his life, and he's not gaining weight well.
The vet doesn't think he has an adrenal problem, but he's not sure, and
we're very leery about exploratory surgery on a ferret who's not in very
good health.  When we first brought him home, he was dehydrated, had no
appetite, could hardly walk.  Lots of Pedialyte later, he was all right
again, and the vets had no idea... Anyway, the reason this is really
important right now is that the two ounces of duck soup I've been
convincing him to eat every other day has finally been having a good
effect!  He's gaining some weight and has a lot more energy--gets out of
his little nest, terrorizes the household, finds his toys, all that.  Keep
your fingers crossed for us.
 
My co-worker had four ferrets a month ago, two 2-year-olds and two little
fellas.  His older male died three weeks ago of unknown causes, very
suddenly.  They didn't do an autopsy.  Unfortunately, his older female came
down with the symptoms--which were basically a general listlessness and
loss of appetite--on Sunday.  Despite everything the vets could do, she
died today.  Penelope was such a sweetheart... she's being autopsied and
they're hoping to figure out what's going on.  We're all really worried
about his little ones.  They were all caged together.
 
There's more.  We have a new bunch of MF babies at work, and we've all been
playing with them--baby ferrets are hard to resist.  One, however, is the
worst baby biter I've ever had any experience with.  Put your hand in the
cage, and he'll fly at you from two feet away to bite.  This morning, I
took him out while cleaning the cage and stuck him in my apron pocket.  I
started thinking about his behavior, and realized that he was basically
acting like he just didn't know it wasn't okay to bite hard--his whole
demeanor when his little body hurtled toward my hand was enthusiasm.  Yay!
A person to play with!  So I started working with him a little while doing
other tasks.  An hour of cuddling in my pocket and grabbing his lower jaw
whenever he bit, and he stopped biting altogether and started licking me.
I was shocked.  That's when I suddenly realized that he's deaf.  I looked
very closely, and there was a tiny little blaze mark on him, too.  All he
needed was a little affection, and someone to communicate in a way he
understood.  I'm terribly proud of myself, and he's become my favorite of
the whole crew.
 
And, finally, someone called us at work because they needed to find a
place for their two ferrets, Belle and Pepe.  Check out my website for
more information about the two of them.  It's at
http://home.maine.rr.com/tesseract/.
 
They're with me until I find the right owner for them... adorable little
critters.
 
So I'm kind of ferreted to death right now.  Thanks for listening!
 
Jen and the (temporarily expanded) Crazy Business
[Posted in FML issue 2663]