Hello Fellow FMLers:
 
Just a short note to let everybody here know that we lost another of our
children yesterday.  Slinky was just shy of 8 years old.
 
Slinky was a beautiful little Siamese silver female, with one brown eye and
one red as fire.  She came to us in a weekend in which we gained two
"rescue" ferrets, herself and Minx.  Slinky was the pet of some good friends
of ours who for job reasons moved to Virginia.  They offered her to us and,
after taking one look at her, we accepted.  Though good people they hadn't
been feeding her properly, and she was suffering from a very protein-poor
diet.  Her coat was so fragile that you would break off hairs just petting
her.
 
A few months of Hill Science Diet later, however, and Slinky had quickly
become a fat and sassy little girl.  She utterly despised the other ferrets
and refused to have anything to do with them (when placed with them she'd
immediately attack all of them at once), so she became the first of our
"loner" ferrets.  This ultimately placed her in the most coveted status of
Bedroom Ferret, where her preferred sleeping spot was in the waterbed
underdressser where the sweaters were stored.
 
A little over a year ago we noticed that Slinky had begun to lose hair and,
being ferret folks, we knew that meant adrenal cancer.  Given her advanced
age we elected not to have surgery done...the odds were poor she'd survive,
and in any case her expected life span wasn't much longer...and that proved
(with an autopsy) to be the correct decision.  Slinky was fortunate in that
the adrenal cancer was being slightly offset by a SECOND cancer, a
pancreatic/insulonoma cancer.  The combination of the two kept her fairly
stable and much healthier that she would have been if she'd had "only" one
cancer or the other.
 
Slinky continued to be incredibly affectionate and loving all the way to the
end.  She slept more and more, getting up only to eat and drink and (if we
were around) to play.  Our best hope was that we'd keep her otherwise happy
and healthy and that she'd pass away in her sleep.
 
Slinky passed away yesterday morning of a severe hypoglycemic "crash"
shortly after getting up to eat.  It probably happened very quickly, with
little suffering...Colleen says she looked "very surprised".  The autopsy
revealed much of what we had expected....a massive adrenal tumor and a
massive pancreatic tumor.  The pancreatic cancer had also spread into her
liver, which was interfering with her glucose production.
 
Slinky was one of the more unique of our children.  To the end we suspect
she didn't think *she* was a ferret...that's what those "others" were.
 
She will be missed.
 
Steve and Colleen
Continually Matching Wits with Newone, Zebulon Pike, Minx, Puck,
                               Taz, Scamp, Ranger, and Rosie
Waiting on the Other Side:  Missy, Ripple, and Slinky
+==========================================================================+
|                                                        _                 |
| Steven Woodcock                                  _____C .._.             |
| Senior Software Engineer, Gameware          ____/     \___/              |
| Lockheed Martin Real3D                     <____/\_---\_\    "Ferretman" |
| Phone:   719-597-5413                                                 |
| E-mail:  [log in to unmask] (Real3D), [log in to unmask] (Wyrd Wyrks)    |
| Web:     http://www.cris.com/~swoodcoc/wyrdhaven.html (Top level page)   |
|          http://www.cris.com/~swoodcoc/ai.html        (Game AI page)     |
|          http://www.cris.com/~swoodcoc/software.html  (AI Software page) |
| Disclaimer: My opinions in NO way reflect the opinions of                |
|             the Lockheed Martin Real3D--get *serious*                    |
+==========================================================================+
[Posted in FML issue 1767]