This is being posted anonymously because I've been spammed a couple of
times before from posting to mailing lists.  Emailed responses to this
can be sent to "sgodun" at flashmail dot com.  Sorry for the hassle, but
I really hate spammers.  :-)
=====
 
Hi there.  My mother has four ferrets (I have three).  One of them (the
oldest, in fact) is a male sable named Bad Boy.  He's about nine years old
or so.  When he was younger he used to run around and play and dig and do
all the ferrety things that ferrets do, but now he's content to spend
nearly all of his time sleeping in his cage.  About two years ago Bad Boy
started losing his hair; I took him to the (excellent) New York Animal
Hospital where he had surgery for an adrenal tumor and insulinoma.  The
surgery went over uneventful and within two months he was back to his
ferrety self.
 
About a year ago Bad Boy developed some severe hair loss, starting around
the base of his tail (again) but eventually spreading to almost his entire
body.  The hospital told us that it was a relapse.  Surgery was an option,
but due to his age and the fact that he'd already had surgery there was a
good chance that he wouldn't even make it through the surgery.  The very
sympathetic doctor advised us to make him as comfortable as possible.
 
In the year or so since then he's lost almost all of his hair, plus he's
got cataracts in both of his eyes.  These days Bad Boy spends most of his
time sleeping in his cage.  He eats almost zero dry ferret food; my mother
hand-feeds him duck soup (about two ice cubes worth) two or three times a
day.  Recently he's started not even going down to the lower level of the
cage to use the litter box, instead pooping right next to his pile of
towels on the upper level and then going back to sleep.  He seems very
happy; he just doesn't want to do anything, including interact with the
other ferrets in the house.
 
So my questions are: Is this normal behavior for a ferret in his situation?
Is there anything that can be done to improve the quality of his life?
 
I ask the latter question also as a lead-in to another issue.  One of my
own ferrets (Rascal) is also getting up there in years (seven or eight
years old).  She has always been very tiny; she's never been more than
19-20 ounces throughout her entire life.  She used to be terribly playful,
dooking and playing and running around and biting ankles and the whole nine
yards.  Right now she's one of three ferrets in my apartment.  They all get
along just fine (they're all sleeping together in the cage right now, on
their own volition) and there's no problems there.  She's never had any
major medical problems, but about nine months ago I took her to the vet
because she was getting lethargic.  The vet diagnosed an enlarged spleen
and low blood sugar and prescribed Pediapred.  She still takes it today.
 
Rascal is also very lethargic, choosing to sleep in her cage for most of
the day.  When she DOES come out she's rarely active for more than 30-60
minutes and she doesn't run or dook or play or do anything she used to do,
even when I try to instigate it.  She doesn't play with any of the other
ferrets and runs away whenever they approach her.  On top of that, I've
recently had to keep her closed up in the cage whenever I'm at work or else
when I come home I find multiple piles of poop under my desk.  (The other
two ferrets are very good with litter box usage -- one of 'em, in fact,
NEVER EVER misses.)
 
There are plenty of toys and distractions around for her and the other
ferrets.  Her diet is unchanged and she eats/drinks/poops regularly.  Her
environment is generally unchanged.  She loves her peanut butter and her
raisins and her Ferretone.
 
So any ideas?  Do you think Rascal is "okay"?  Anything I can do to improve
her situation?  Thanks for any input.
 
[Steve]
[Posted in FML issue 2803]