Hi, all,
 
Kim Burkard brought up some interesting observations about sex personality
traits.  My two ferrets (one M, one F, both fixed) are just like she
describes, except neither is really emotionally needy.  In my case, it's
more like Murphy (male) puts up with me picking him up, whereas Boo-Boo
(female) struggles and fights to get me to put her down.  I had always
ascribed this to the fact that Murphy is MF and Boo-Boo isn't, but maybe
it's partly sex-related as well.
 
About food shapes....I now have egg on my face!  Ya know, I'm a relative
newbie (2 1/2 years now with Murph, 1 1/2 year with Boo-Boo, only four
months on the FML) and I continue to learn new things every day.  When
Boo-Boo showed a reluctance to eat the Science Diet that I put in the dish
in their cage, I correlated that with other peoples' observations on the FML
regarding shape, and wrote a long post detailing my theory to the FML.  So,
I decided to switch the ferrets' Science Diet with the cats' Iams, and
started putting the Iams in the dish in their cage.  I then imagined that
maybe Boo-Boo was eating more, but I think most of their eating is done when
I'm asleep or at work, so it's a little hard to tell.  Then, tonight when I
took them out of the cage to play, Boo-Boo immediately ran down stairs, made
a bee-line for the cat dish, and began scarfing down the cats' new Science
Diet food with great relish--and then started stashing it under the couch.
(This house has some pretty well-fed dust-bunnies, let me tell you!) I guess
all she really wanted was a little variety.  Sheesh, I can be pretty obtuse
at times!  Oh, well; that's what I really love about these little
fuzzfaces--when I'm smart enough to listen, they teach me *a lot*.
 
This desire for a variety of food could also explain Boo-Boo's penchant for
eating the alfalfa pellets I tried as cat litter.  To those of you that
responded encouraging me to try again to use the alfalfa as litter, rest
assured that I will, right after I come home from the Easter holiday--I
don't want my friend/petsitter to have to worry about this while I'm gone.
I really like the ecological aspects of the alfalfa pellets, and would like
to make it work if I can.
 
(BTW, Boo-Boo keeps climbing across the keybd of my laptop as I write this,
trying to help me type this and steal my TV remote at the same time.  I take
no responsibility for any extraneous letters--like the occasional silent "q"
that appear anywhere in this post!  ...and I thought I was the technophile
in my family!)
 
   Cheers,
       Eric Lucas
       [log in to unmask]
[Posted in FML issue 1528]