Happy Holidays to Everyone from the Critterpen.
 
As I posted before, I recently took in two boarders who are very
intelligent.  These little girls are really living it up here.  They
especially enjoy the freedom of a whole room to run and play in.  Now,
I will get to the point of this post.  For years I have kept my ferrets
cage water in glass bottles.  We changed over back around '90 or so.  Long
enough ago, that I had forgotten the real reason as to why we had done
this.  The new girls came with one of the plastic water bottles, and it all
came back to me.  It took a while, but I noticed they kept going to the
other cages to drink.  So, I checked on their warer and after two days,
the water in the bottle smelled like gasoline.
 
Plastic is made from petroleum products and it appears that an inferior
brand is being used to make pet water bottles.  Try this experiment.  Put
some tap water in a plastic animal waterer and let it sit for two days.
Then open it up and sniff.  It is not the water here, as we have used
boiled water and filtered water, boiled and filtered and plain tap water.
Everytime it is the same.  I found an old glass Listerine bottle and
replaced the boarders' plastic bottle with glass.
 
I have a serious question.  Is it possible that these water bottles made of
inferior plastic are contributing to all the cancers the little ones get?
I have left the same water standing in plastic bottles made for human use,
and this does not happen, except with plastic milk bottles.  Baby bottles,
plastic glasses, etc.  seem to be okay.
 
Could some more of our folks experiment with this?  We may have a very
serious problem for small animals when it comes to drinking bottles.  All
the different types and brands, even those cool colored ones.  Let me know
how your experiments work out.  The email address with this post is my true
address.
 
It is hard to find glass containers nowadays, but I am by habit, a saver of
things and as an artist, saved a lot of glass bottles for my paints as I
found the plastic did strange things to paint.  Old listerine bottles and
old Karo syrup bottles work very well.  Also, these can be run through the
dishwasher and sterilized there or by boiling.  We really should push the
pet industry to provide our little ones with good plastic.
 
Sincerely,
Cheryl Nordgulen
[Posted in FML issue 3277]