Hi All,
 
I've been hanging around and reading the FML for many years now, but mostly
tend to be a lurker, since I just would not have enough time in every day
to respond to *everything* I'd like to respond to...:)
 
The reason I am writing this now is because of the youngest of my three,
Percival.  He seems to have picked up a some neuortic tendencies that I
can't resolve...
 
All of a sudden he has decided he doesn't like being in the ferret tower
with the door closed.  If its play time he will climb in and eat and hang
out in the cage without a problem, but as soon as the door is closed he
freaks out and starts trying to scrape all of the food out of the bowl and
begins biting the bars on the door and around it and shaking it and the
cage constantly.  I bought a new food bowl so that Cricket and Zoe don't
starve, one that has a lip that keeps the food *in* the bowl, but the new
bowl seems to have increased his food dumping obsession to a fever pitch.
When I first bought it and put it in the cage he spent the next 30 minutes
frantically trying to get the food out of the bowl *without* a break.
 
I am at the end of my rope with respect to ideas and am unsure how to
resolve it.  Time out of the cage also doesn't seem to matter either, they
can be out for an hour or 6 hours at any given time, but as soon as the
door is closed and they are back in the cage he goes at it again.  They
have toys in their home, but Percival has never seemed interested at all in
any of the fuzzy's toys, ever.  I even tried to set up a small enclosure
specifically for the fuzzies so they could get in and out of their cage
most of the time and have run space, but as soon as Percival got out of the
cage he immediately began tearing up the carpet next to the barricades...:P
I'm probably going to pick up a couple pieces of clear plastic/lexan type
stuff to put on the floor so that they can't destory the carpet that way
and see how it goes...I've tried bitter apple and plenty of other
nasty-taste-stop-biting type stuff and none of it seems to phase him.
 
I don't have the space or the excess sanity to leave the fuzzies out all
the time when we're not home and he's driving us nuts with his constant
freaking out while in the cage.  Giving him to a new home is *not* an
option, so finding some way to help him relax or settle is the only way to
go.  I'm starting to get the feeling that if she thought it would happen,
my wife would probably try to convince me to find him a new home, but I am
from the school that once you take an animal into your home you have a
responsibility to it through good and bad...:)
 
Any suggestions??
 
Thanks!
Butch
Cricket (the old lady), Zoe (the demon possessed ferret) and Percival (the
neurotic boy) and George the cat
[Posted in FML issue 3124]