Let me tell you a story about a wonderful albino ferret, named Ozzie, and
an equally warmed-hearted cat, named Rocky.  Cats like ferrets enjoy the
reputation of attacking or "stealing" the breath from babies.
 
My story begins before our daughter Mae was born.  We had been warned about
cats and ferrets.  No one could understand why we would want to put our
newborn baby in such danger with having such animals around.
 
We were also concerned by the fact that the cat had decided that the crib
that we had put up was her new nest.  We would chase her out of it every
time we found her in it but she always came back to the crib to sleep.
 
My husband and I had read the literature on how to introduce a newborn to
your dogs that already in the family.  Mostly it consisted of being sure to
bring home a garment the baby has worn and let the smell and sleep with it.
A Kinda fooling them into recognizing the baby by smell.  We let the dogs,
cat and ferret smell and sleep with some of our daughter's clothing and a
blanket and the next day we brought her home.
 
When the baby came, we started the introduction process with all of our
animals and began to slowly introduce them to her.  So under our
supervision we brought each animal in one at a time and let them check out
the new "pet".  Everyone of them smelled her over and they all appeared
to recognize her smell.  She became at that point part of the pack that
included the ferret, cat and three dogs.
 
A little aside to this, we did tried to supervise her and the animals but I
will tell you that is tough one to do when the animals do have free reign
of the house.  I recommend this to everyone that has animals and a newborn
tin the house together, but one day I did find that I had left the baby's
door open to her room while she was in there for a nap.  I quietly stepped
into the room and found not only our daughter curled up in the crib but the
ferret and the cat laying on either side of her.  They were napping too.
After that I was satisfied that my animals had excepted her and were not
going to do her harm.
 
Now my reply to what Jack Hanna had said about the ferret attacking the
baby.  All animals have the potential to do anyone harm.  This includes not
only ferrets but dogs, cats, horses, pigs and anything else we bring into
our homes as pets.  If people don't acknowledge that and take the
appropriate measures to introduce a baby to the animal part of the family
then the potential for harm exists.  Animals may view a baby a an
interloper and a threat to the family unless you take loving measures to
secure the baby's place in the household.
 
Animals and babies are and should be a joy to have in your home but they
are also a responsibility of ours to love, protect, feed and clean.  If you
can't do these things in order for them to be happy and healthily, why have
them in the first place?
[Posted in FML issue 2537]