Holly is a ten-week old kit.  The rest of the (rather large) business is
pretty sure that 10-week old kits need to be dragged to a nest box.  Holly
has been dragged a bit.  However, she comes from a spunky family, and has
more or less convinced everyone to generally let her be.  And she is good
at getting into places that everyone else is too big for.
 
Yesterday was Ferret Room Day, the weekly scrub-down.  Bags of trash, doors
opening, much ado.  The ferrets help a great deal.  However, I didn't.  I'd
been sanding and painting all day, and was lying in a btub of hot water,
feeling sorry for myself about my aching back.  My daughter and her friend
(obviously a good friend--I'm not sure I'd help with a job like this!) did
the dirty work, cleaning and scrubbing and hauling and refilling.
 
This morning I did the a.m. clean-up and feeding, and then picked up Zena,
Fang, and Evie out for their special feeding.  No Holly...so I fed those
three and went back and looked for Holly.
 
She was not in any of the nesting boxes.  Not in any of the hammocks.  Not
behind the food bins.  I checked all the boxes and hammocks again.
 
Nervousness!
 
I looked IN the food bins.  No Holly.  She wasn't in the litter bins,
either.  Not in the cupboard.  (Although everyone else ran into the
cupboard the moment I opened it, and they much enjoyed the chaos as I
shook out everything in the cupboard.)
 
I took all the bedding out of the nest boxes.  No Holly.
 
I examined the window screen.  It looked unbroken.
 
I sat down and thought.  Did she escape and run out of the room while it
was being cleaned?  Could she have gone out in the trash?  Had she managed
to go out with the litter to the compost pile?  Had she wandered around
outside last night?!  The dogs had been in last night.  What if one of
them had killed her!!  I started to really worry.
 
Then Holly stuck her head out of the clear plastic play tube and attacked
my foot.
[Posted in FML issue 3123]