Ok.  We have a potty monster here.  There is just no other way to describe
it.
 
We've had our wonderfully sweet Bear boy for almost a year now (hi, Shelly!!
:), and we adopted him knowing that he'd spent the first six months of his
life alone in a cage at a lawn and garden store that *really* doesn't need
to be selling pets, especially ferrets.
 
But I digress.
 
We love Bear dearly and managed rather quickly (within a month or so) to
overcome a lot of his bad behavior, especially his nipping, which occurred
simply because he was unsocialized.  However, we have been consistently
unable to get a handle on his potty behavior.  Folks, it is simply
*atrocious*.  He is one of those rare fuzzbutts that just goes wherever he
happens to be.  And I do mean *wherever*.  The problem is that it seems to
be getting even worse now, something I thought impossible.
 
We have a two-level cage, and he goes all over the bottom level, but we've
been able to handle this with frequent cleaning and lots of newspaper.  But
after our two-week trip in August, during which time the fuzzies were with a
capable sitter, Bear began going on the upper level as well.  This behavior
has just gotten worse and worse, and he is now soiling his bedding
routinely.  The last straw: today I went to give the cage its more thorough
clean (a weekly task), and I pulled it away from the wall to find a mound of
feces on the floor and dripping down the sides of the cage where he has been
pottying on the second level.
 
This is a disgusting situation.  This has to stop.  I'm serious.  I need
some help here.  FWIW, he shares the cage with two to three other fuzzies at
any given time, and they are caged when we are away during the day but
always get at least 2 (usually more) hours of runtime at night.  Bear is a
sensitive boy, and I don't want to do anything that will upset him, but this
has just gone too far.
 
HELP!  THE POTTY MONSTER IS HERE!!!
 
-Tasha
The development of our cerebral cortex has been the greatest achievement of
the evolutionary processes.  Big deal.
           -- Fox Mulder, FBI
[Posted in FML issue 2134]