>I am hoping those of you with ferrets and cats can help me with your
>experience. ...
 
In digest form, here's my story:
 
My brother moved in with me from Idaho with two wonderful adult female
ferts, about a year old each.  I got am eight week old kitten, and for the
first couple of days, the ferts would bite a bit rough.  They soon settled
down...as Charlie the cat got a tad bigger, they'd get in frequent wrestling
matches.  Everyone ate the same food (Iams kitten) often at the same time,
and Charlie had a tendency to bury the girl's litterbox droppings.
 
After about a year, the two girls were stolen out of my brother's car,
probably by kids.  Here in California, they're rare and valuable...he only
left them for a minute.  Charlie was bored, moping around with nobody to
play with, so we did the "gambler's special tour bus to Reno" and smuggled
back little Felix the 7week old albino Marshall.
 
What happened next was pure comedy.  Charlie had never seen an albino or an
infant weasel, so he the "I'm gonna kill that rat" look...until he got a
whiff of that ever-familiar scent.  He retracted his claws, crouched down
and gently played with little Felix, who of course was jumping up trying to
eat this huge 8lbs cat.
 
That cat raised that ferret.  Charlie would actually carry Felix around by
the scruff!
 
Mikey was an adult rescue we took in about a year after that...he'd never
seen a cat, but joined right into the fun regardless.  One more kitten
later, we had a complete household.
 
My brother had to go back to Idaho, and since he was moving into a bigger
place he took the cats and I kept the ferts.
 
Odd note about mixed-specied wrestling: the ferts would always try and lure
the kitties under something low, since in tight quarters it was "weasel
domination time".  In the open, a cat can do better, but we'd often see the
cats outsmarted by the ferts.  Felix, raised from babyhood by a cat, had a
particular technique of grabbing a cat head while the cat was on it's back
and staying up "above" the head, gripping with his arms...a cat can't get
it's front legs up there, and was basically pinned.
 
Adult ferrets can easily adapt to a cat; a baby cat can get used to ferts
but an adult cat will never get beyond the "toleration" stage.  Adding a
litten to the mix should be no problem...
[Posted in FML issue 1708]