Just wanted to share this little tale with all of you....
 
Bandit is living with me as a foster ferret from the Pennsylvania Ferret
Rescue Association (Kym Barone and Mary McCarty).  They both took care of
him at various times over the past few months.  Bandit has been a very sick
little ferret.  He's survived an adrenal operation, the removal of his
spleen, work on his pancreas, is now insulinomic, and survived a bad case
of shelter shock and heliobacter.  After I brought him home and introduced
him to my fuzzies, he developed a bad intestinal problem and has been
fighting that since the end of March.  I'm not sure if it is another case
of shelter shock or heliobacter or what.  He only eats various versions of
duck soup (we are on a new recipe right now), and he only eats when I hold
and tilt the plate so he can ever so slowly lick it clean.  He won't drink
water out of a bowl or a bottle, in fact, he has to have a few pieces of
kibble in his water, I suppose he likes the flavor.  But he won't eat dry
kibble.  Bandit is a grumpy old man, who has never learned to play with
other ferrets.  In fact, he usually just sleeps all day in his bed.  He
grumbles at the other ferrets when they come to say hello, and refuses to
acknowledge they exist.  I know he's a little afraid of them.
 
Bear with me, the tale gets better....
 
I was convinced, this past week, that I was going to lose him.  He was not
eating or drinking much at all, and by the odor of his belly and urine, I
could tell he was nearly in renal failure.  His eyes had sunken in to his
head, which in my experience is always a very, very bad sign.  He didn't
get up and move any more than was absolutely necessary to get to the
litterbox, and he slept 23.5 hours a day.  I was nearly ready to call Mary
and Kym and see if they had an opinion on when might be the best time to
let him go peacefully, and not make him suffer anymore.  Instead, I decided
to get very aggressive with his care.  I changed to a new duck soup recipe,
which he seemed to like better.  Instead of feeding him 3 times a day, I
fed him 6, and wouldn't give up until he ate.  I changed back to the kibble
water (he had been using the water bottle previously), and wouldn't give
up until he drank a lot.  I've been carrying him around the house in his
sleepsack, so he is always looking at a different view.
 
The weather was so beautiful this weekend I thought to myself, what would
it hurt to let him go outside in his sleepsack, and lay in the soft moist
grass, and smell the dirt and the grass before he leaves this planet?  So
outside we went, and I gently laid his sack down in the grass in the shade.
Sniff, sniff.  I saw a nose come out of the sack and disappear back in.
Sniff, sniff, sniff.  The nose came back out and buried itself in a tuft of
grass before retreating.  I waited patiently.  Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff.
The nose reappeared, followed by the head!  And the legs!  I sat back in
shock as I watched him totter out of the sack!  He walked slowly across the
lawn, nearly falling over a few times, and sniffed his way past the front
door over to a flower bed (which is mostly tall foliage and grass like
plants right now.)  He wasn't very steady on his feet, but he was walking.
He wandered in to the flower bed and worked his way through the foliage,
sniffing at all the plants.  He pulled a few leaves down and made a bed
to lay in, but he got up shortly and kept walking.  It took him about ten
minutes to cover the territory my other ferrets cover in seconds, because
he had to stop and rest before moving on.  I watched him wander, and sniff,
and dig, and rest with tears running down my face.
 
Since then, Bandit has been out a few more times.  He doesn't go far, but
he seems to enjoy it.  He's eating much better and drinking on his own,
and seems to finally be pulling out of his latest health crisis.
 
When you ask why foster?  Why care?  Why adopt an old, sick ferret?  I
answer: Bandit's holiday
[Posted in FML issue 2698]