Hello all,

I just got back from camping in Colorado and after thoroughly bleaching
out my towering ferret cage and mopping the tile floor I keep their
playpen on, I read up on over a week's worth of missed FML. I missed
a great deal, including the PBS ferret episode. Seems they aren't
reshowing it here in San Antonio *pout*. I'm enjoying your comments,
though.

Apparently, my sitter (who I love and adore and who is also a ferret
owner) has encouraged my oldest ferret's naughty habits. Now, she
free-ranges her one adorable ferret all day; I prefer to have my
four safe and sound if I am not able to directly supervise them. My
geriatric cat (who I was sure was going to pass on before the 2007
NBA champs were crowned -- all our cats are fans of the local team
*wink* -- but who has regained health and vigor) has a fear of them
unless they are in the playpen -- then they are unceasingly fascinating
to him. (I should note that he has always been a *huge* cat and when
we did allow him to roam, he was always beat up by the smaller
neighborhood cats. Yet he couldn't understand why we chose to neuter
him and "trap" him indoors. He is our "yella-belly" and a big sissy,
but lots of fun.) Anywhoozles, my smallest (yet oldest) ferret is a
determined climber. She often stands in the playpen in the same pose
as meerkats and analyzes the playpen bars, trying to figure out how
to climb higher (it's one of those Marshall Ferrets wire numbers).
She will stand on the lower horizontal bar and clench the mid-range
horizontal bar tightly with her fore-paws and stare up, wheels turning
in her head as to how to attain her goal. This so amused my sitter that
she took to placing Tomo's feet on the mid-range bar and letting her
stand there, holding the upper limit horizontal bar with her fore-paws
and sniffing the rarefied air at the top of the playpen. When Tomo
tired of that, she did a little monkey slide down, turning her paws
so that she gripped the vertical bars and slid softly to the
newspaper-lined floor. She showed me this trick when I got home and
it truly seemed to be something Tomo got a kick out of and she seemed
safe doing it.

Then, today, as I sat reading the FML on my laptop in the front room,
I looked up to see that Miss Tomo was at the top of the playpen , her
front feet on the outside of the playpen and her back feet on the
inside, her head wiggling around as she balanced her body precariously,
trying to figure out how to get down. I rushed over to put her back
safely on the ground, scolding her firmly. The other three were looking
at her with some bemusement. She was looking at me with her patented
"But Mooooooommy" protesting look -- I'm quite certain if she spoke,
she would whine. I had to remove the triangular hammock that had been
safely hanging in the pen for the past month, since that was her new
stepping stone. I can always stick it in the cage, since she chews
through the straps on the hammocks on a regular basis, the silly girl.

Tomo is quite the talented little escape artist and this was hardly her
first attempt. She has succeeded in different ways and each time, we
have to remove something from the playpen to keep her in it. I wonder
if the other 3 think she is a spoilsport. She does end up enticing my
slightly larger boy to follow her example, the two chubbier babies
can't. She's not quite 2 years old, she's a ring leader, and she's
quite adept at surprising her mommy. So why is she the *only* one who
can't (or most likely won't) go in the litter box? She insists on going
right next to it in the playpen and on the level one above (where there
is no pan) in the cage. I've tried moving the pan to that location,
only to have her go to the opposite corner or change floors. I can't
very well cover the whole cage in litter boxes! I look at those
beautiful fabric cage sets some of y'all make and all I can think is
that the first day I would put that in, it would be covered in poop
and pee. :<

Sometimes I feel like Maxwell Smart, shaking my head slowly and
muttering, "If only she'd use her talent for good, not evil*". (*Evil
here meaning making mommy's life more challenging ;>).

In other changes, Chouji has taken to lunging up on his back legs when
I stick my arm near him, grasping my wrist with his fore-paws, leaning
on me to support his weight (he's a big boy -- about a 3 pounder) and
then licking my arm until I extricate it. As affectionate and sweet as
I find this, I am puzzled as to why he has suddenly taken to this style
of affection. Anybody else's baby do this? He started this before I
left, so it's not because he missed me.

~Jennie (the long-winded who had no captive audience to ramble to about
her ferrets whilst in CO) and her four ferrets, the Anime-ted Ferrets
(go on, I dare ya to ask *grin*)

[Posted in FML 5678]