This is Susie Lee, a shelter-mom of, currently 37 elderly, ill and
hospice ferrets.
 
Let's put this diet restriction to it's genuine test.  Because the ONLY
way I am going to begin to "cut down" on the food these elderlies require
is with DAILY bloodwork monitoring.  So unless someone wants to come over
and roll up their sleeves and help pay for DAILY labwork on 37 ferrets,
ain't NO WAY I'm even considering this!  Here's a hypothetical reason
why....
 
Alright, we have, currently, ferrets "A", "B", and "C" in our makeshift
diet-restrictive "lab".  Has to be a laboratory with daily monitoring
bloodwork able to show sudden drops in critical values.
 
Ferret "A" is 8 years old, living on every-six-month Lupron shots to
counter adrenal symptoms.  He requires food around the clock because
of the calorie burn effected by the adrenal hyperactivity.  A drop in
calories to a ferret like this will force the body to begin breaking down
and consuming IT's OWN muscle tissue-protien, which is, as in starving
humans, the reason why muscles become flaccid and tissue is so quickly
lost.  Even a minor drop in calories to any ferret in an inner combat
with adrenal disease symptoms is...deadly!
 
Ferret "B" is a hypoglycemic diabetic, whose blood sugars drop
drastically after just four hours without food.  She has been revived
from coma-situations from this disability and forgets to eat at all.
She must be fed at least every four hours by the care-human or else back
into severe hypoglycemia she goes.  This ferret is unABLE to be allowed
to consume any fewer calories so as to maintain her life and the margin
of health she can be maintained at.
 
Ferret "C" is 9 years old, she had been brought to the Rescue almost
literally skin-and-bones sufferring from a severe internal ulcer,
periodontal disease, and blindness from her malnutrition (lack of
critical vitamins will cause permanent blindness...in humans the
conditions creating this is called "beri-beri").  Since her very slow
nursed recovery back to some health and something like a normal weight,
she remains blind, and also senile and forgetful, completely forgetting
to eat but ravenously hungry when fed by her care-person.  She has been
fed home-made "duck soup" preparations by me for nearly the last three
years, every four hours.  She cannot eat less, because she has bouts of
sleeplessness and activity (running over the still-sleeping heads of her
cage-mates, picking different corners to frantically dig in, etc.) not
unlike the rest of us older folks, and will "suddenly" burn off calories
unexpectedly.
 
The only things not hypothetical about these three ferrets is that they
are, in themselves, very real.  Their names are Gusselwaite The Good,
Baby-Doll babushka, and Molly Blue-Angel.
 
They represent absolutely typical examples of the rest of the elderly
around here.
 
I WILL NOT starve them without daily, even HOURLY monitoring bloodwork.
They cannot speak up, as a human might, to SAY that they're feeling
weak...they'd simply go on until suddenly dropping off into a deadly
coma, or WHILE their own muscle tissue is being consumed by their own
bodies.
 
Scientists will NOT advance the SUPPOSED "benefits" of near-starvation
because the only way to actually keep any animal at the peak performance
levels of this, as is done at the best thoroughbred stables, ,but CAN Not
be done in the average home nor Rescue, is DAILY lab-tested monitoring!
 
Susan Lee.  Licensed Practical Nurse in the State of Florida, and cheif
cook and bottle-washer to 37 ferrets at the Pensacola Ferret & Dove
Animal Rescue,3815 Tom Lane Drive, Pensacola, Florida.32504
 
See most of their photos, although their names are woefully stunted, at
www.weloveferrets.com
[Posted in FML issue 3952]