Our two fuzzybutts often sleep on our bed (one likes to wedge himself
between our pillows or be on top of our feet so he can kiss and nibble them
when he wakes up).  They also spend a lot of nights in their cage, but I
like to snuggle with them some nights, too.  The key is that you have to
get them litter trained in whatever room you are sleeping in.  Ours spend
most of the day running around our ferretproofed bedroom (another key
necessity) b/c I work at home and my "office" is in the bedroom (for now!).
Thus, we have worked with them a lot to get them perfectly littertrained
in there.  We have a litterbox under a short wardrobe with high clearance
in our room so the box is out of the way yet easily accesible to them, and
we have had to make sure that they learned to ONLY go there.
 
Then at night while we are sleeping and they wake up, they are not tempted
to go anywhere else.  Our youngest one (4 months), and the ferret we got
first, is perfectly littertrained-he'll wake up in the middle of the night
and make running (literally RUNNING) to the box his first priority upon
waking.  (It's actually a pretty funny sight to see this half-asleep ferret
boogie to the potty, jump in and go, all the while looking as if he might
fall over in there and go back to sleep.)
 
Our older one, who grew up without much litter training before we got him
from a shelter, has a much harder time with this and that's the only reason
we ever really HAVE to cage them at night-he's still learning to use the
box 100% of the time when we're not looking.  He's much better than he was
when we got him 3 weeks ago, but we've go five months of no litter box use
to work against.  It is possible, though, since our little one ALWAYS uses
the box, even when we take them to a new place (like our parents').
 
Anyhoo, if you'd like them to be able to sleep with you, you need to litter
train them for your bedroom.  Also, fear not-they won't poop IN your bed
or on you, especially if that's where they're sleeping, too.  They'll get
down and at least poop on the floor in a corner or at the edge of the
room.  They don't like to poop where they sleep anymore than you'd like
them to... :)
 
Good luck, and have a lot of patience with the out-of-the-cage litter
training.
 
-April
[Posted in FML issue 3347]