Hello FML --

Perhaps like me some of you have ferrets and other animals sharing
living space and want to keep the other animals away from the ferrets'
food. Here's how I have solved the problem:

We use a box with wire-mesh sides, a hinged lid, and holes on each end
for the ferrets to use to get in and out of the box. We lift the lid
to put the food inside.

Actually I had two boxes made -- one for the outdoor pen and one for
up in my bathroom. Some of the more persistent cats used to jump into
the outdoor pen through holes in the center of the roof in order to
get at the fertie food. Then they were either stuck inside the pen
until someone let them out -- OR they crawled up the ferret tunnel that
zigzags up the outside of the house and then they came out the other
end onto my balcony!

Only one still does that from time to time, but a couple get onto the
TOP of the tunnel without going into the pen and walk up the tunnel
to the veranda and jump over the veranda railing.

I had to have one box made 2 times -- the one in my bathroom is
only big enough for a couple of ferrets at a time plus a couple of
dishes -- one dish has soup and the other has kibble. The first
version of that box had mesh that was just big enough for a cat paw
to reach through and scoop up the wet food! It was a funny sight,
especially when a cat did it while on top of the box.

For the second box, the mesh was smaller, but one cat would reach into
the box through a ferret door and pull the material that was under the
food (PishPad) so as to drag the food close enough to the door that he
could scoop the food out. So I put four black binder clips on the
corners of the PishPad material -- poking the corners of the material
through the mesh at each corner of the cage and fastening the clips to
the material corners outside of the mesh.

[Posted in FML 6725]