I've been trying to figure out lately exactly what color our Mortimer is.
Sebastian is a plain old sable --nice black extremities, golden undercoat,
black mask.  But Mortimer keeps changing color, and I wonder what to call
him.  First, I've seen his parents.  His mom is a light color, maybe
cinnamon or champagne.  I'm not sure which is which.  The father is silver.
When I first saw Mortimer, he was sable.  Then, when we bought him, nearly
his whole head was white, with a tiny rim of brown around his eyes for a
mask.  The back of his head was light brown, and the rest was a normal sable
color/pattern.  Now he's turned back into what seems like a sable.  He looks
a lot like Sebastian, except his back is sort of steely grey.  His undercoat
has always been a pale cream.  Will he reach a stable mature color (he's
about 9 months), or cycle like this every year?  Is he a sable all year, or
only half a year?  Is there a special name for sables that are sort of
silvery?
 
Sleeping with ferrets: Sebastian loves to sleep with us, and we are usually
very aware of him in the bed.  I'm also a pretty small person, so I don't
worry about squishing him.  I rolled over on him once, and he chattered like
a squirrel, which woke me up.  When I got off him, he gave me this indignant
look, and then went back to sleep.  Until last night, Mortimer couldn't get
up into the bed by himself, so we didn't have to worry about getting
"Mortimized" (A truly terrifying experience!) in our sleep.  Then, last
night, he made some sort of a cognitive breakthrough, and woke my husband up
with a solid chomp to the foot.  I'm not sure what got into him.  He left a
pattern of four bloody little puncture marks.  Then, when he was kicked off
the bed, he made repeated assaults on it.  He would run across the floor and
hurl himself at it.  My husband stayed vigilant, repelling all assaults
until he got bored, and I went back to sleep.  Mortimer's sense of humor is
just a little twisted.  He hasn't bitten that hard in weeks and weeks.  The
really frightening part of being Mortimized is you never know when he's
going to get it into his head to bite hard, and if he does, he's usually
chosen a time when you can't grab him and administer negative reinforcement.
*sigh* Wonder how he'd look as a pair of mittens...?
 
-Catherine Shaffer and
Sebastian *snuggle wuzzle cuddle* and
Mortimer "Wake up, it's time for my 3 am play session!  *chomp*" and
Poor Brent "OW!"
[Posted in FML issue 1490]