By sappy I don't mean you'll need a hanky when you read this.  Well, some
might.
 
Buttons is almost 9 months old, our big, deaf as a post and almost as dumb,
cinnamon blaze boy.  He was enchanted with his first Christmas tree that we
brought home Sunday, an 8 foot (just 1" shy of the ceiling) white pine.  He
drank the water, played with the lower branches, and tried, unsuccessfully,
to climb it.  He then rubbed his pitchy face along the carpet, picking up
various bits of fuzz and dust.
 
Buttons then presented his woeful face to us.  His long lovely whiskers
(upwards of 4") were plastered against his face along with the carpet fuzz.
We removed the worst of the fuzz, and decided to try using vegetable oil to
remove the pitch.  But we were fixing dinner, and put him back down to play
until later.
 
Alas, later was too late!  The next time we saw him, he had dealt with the
pitch on his whiskers by removing or breaking most of them off!  On one side
of his face, his whiskers are now mostly a meager 1 1/2" long, the other
side a little longer.  Buttons' long luxurious whiskers are gone!
 
The moral of the story: Keep your whiskers clean.
 
Linda Iroff
North Coast Ferret Shelter
http://www.oberlin.edu/~liroff/ncfs.html
[Posted in FML issue 2158]