Once again, thanks to all those who offered advice and condolences for
the new deceased Rascal.  May he(ex-he?) be in a cage door opening,
jumping and bouncing happyland.
 
Yesterday, Andrea and I went out and bought two 6 week old kits.  A
silver-mitt female and a cinnamon male.  The silver mitt already is
showing intelligence and an attitude and we have named her Murphy (as in
Brown).  The cinnamon looks like he is going to be a big boy and is VERY
vocal.  He makes his happy dooks as he is hop-splating around the
apartment.  He makes a "peeping" or "meowing" sound at various times and
let out a loud "squawk" when I was changing his food dish and he got a
paw under my heel.  Funny thing was, he "grumbled" to himself after that
for about 2 minutes.
 
Get this, after listening to all the horror stories about introducing new
ferrets to old ones, I was really leery of introducing Bandit (a 3.5
pound neutered male) to the young ones.  We first let bandit sniff them
in the their travel carrier, then we held Bandit up and held the little
ones up to him for a mutual sniffing.  Then on the ground.  The only
thing Bandit did was following them and around and continually try and
sniff the anal areas.  We also noticed that he was drooling on their
scruffs but not actually opening his mouth.  We've noticed, that whhile
Bandit is a sweetie and dispenses lots of kisses he is "special" (like
Jerry's kids).  Could it be that he doesn't really know what to do to
establish dominance?
 
Anyway,
        --Robert ("Dad", the mean-ole disciplinarian)
        --Andrea ("Mom", softie)
        --Bandit ("Duhhh, what those?")
        --Murphy ("What's this?!  Hey, you don't watch ladies go potty!")
        --??? ("Peep, meow, squawk, grumble" sleep).
[Posted in FML issue 1281]