Hi, Renee!  It was great to meet you and two of your beautiful kids--
two-legged and four.  And Gracie deserved to win kissiest, ferret-vite or
no.  I find it disturbing that I don't know your daughter's name... don't
tell her I said that.  She was adorable, and very sweet.
 
In case anyone can't tell, I was at Ferret Fun Day in North Conway too...
Dennis and I and five of our fuzzies.  We had a ball, and our ferrets
seemed to be a hit.  Every time I looked around, someone was either
exclaiming over Simon (the DEW), or a kid was walking off with Amadeo
(three-month-old Cinnamon), or Tesseract (dark Cinnamon?  Red chocolate?)
had wandered off and was busy excavating someone's purse.  We didn't win
many awards--my babies were busy being asleep for most of the day--but
Winter did get 6th in Kissiest and Gibber placed 2nd in Longest Sit Up.  We
came home with a corner hammock someone else won in the raffle (they took
pity on us folks with bad luck), and laughed a lot about entering Simon in
the Tube Race.  His favorite game has always been hide-and-seek.  I think
he was the first through the tube, but then he waited for Dennis to tap his
nose so he could duck back in.  Little freak.
 
One not-so-pleasant side effect: a few of my family have diarrhea.  Most
of them did on the trip, which I attributed to a 2-hour car ride (it's
happened before).  It didn't seem like anything dangerous, just kind of
runny poop, and it cleared up once we were home.  Then, today (Monday), I
almost stepped in a pile of green, mucousy, icky, yucky poop... not neon,
but definitely green.  I'm pretty sure it came out of the little guy,
Amadeo.  As far as I know, none of my kids have ever had ECE--although I'm
not entirely certain about Molly and Gibber, who were both adults when they
came to live with us.  Should only one of them be showing symptoms, if it
is ECE?  Everyone seems fine--running, playing, eating and drinking--and
I'm scheduled to make some more duck soup tonight anyhow, so we'll just
start giving everyone some and see what happens... I'm mostly worried about
Molly.  He's over six and not in good health.  We're working on isolating
him right now.  Gibber's 3, and all the others are under a year.
 
I also want to respond to the message about getting a kitten: by all means,
let your ferret pick out your kitten.  And, you know, I just might have a
kitten that was raised by ferrets available--I'll know in a couple of weeks
if the person who's supposed to be taking him really is. :-)   Anyway, I
have cats and ferrets, and they not only co-exist, they get along really
well.  My Maine Coon Zephyr is my honorary Silver Mitt.  She and Tess are
best friends.  It depends on the cat, and the ferret, but from what I've
seen most ferrets think cats are fun to play with.  Most cats are a little
annoyed by that.  Kittens, however, LOVE to play with ferrets--at least,
mine do.  From the time they were three weeks old and Amadeo climbed into
their nesting box to sleep with them, they've been playing with my whole
crew.
 
The sex of your kitten shouldn't matter at all.  My ferrets don't seem to
care.  Of course, my ferrets jump on anything that moves.
 
I love watching a tiny baby ferret chase a twelve-pound cat through my
house.
 
Jen and the Crazy Business
(Molly, Gibber, Tesseract, Winter, Simon, Amadeo),
 and
their Feline Friends (Luthien, Zephyr, Binya-Binya, Lucky, Rugged, Kieva,
Morpheus, ChileBuckett, Pomegranate)
[Posted in FML issue 2674]