Hooray for Pam and her tiled living room, someday when we have a house of
our own I definately will be tiling the ferret areas, and that was great
information to have!  Interestingly enough I did something as an
experiement with some tile myself the other day and it's worked out well,
so since the subject came up I thought I would share.
 
I live in a carpeted apartment, and my gruesome twosome have about an 80%
hit rate of the box, which considering that they are out of their cage
about 98% of the time I'm ok with that.  Luckily they only have two spots
that are their favourite places to go, and putting a pan there annoys them
more than it helps.  No amount of steam cleaning, scubbing or putting down
blankets will deter them from their favourite spot.  There aren't any
visible stains, but as far as the ferrets go, the nose knows.
 
So I got this nifty idea of buying large (12x12) single ceramic tiles and
setting them on those spots.  No grout or anything, just resting on the
carpet.  I didn't know if the fuzz would go for it or not, but if they did
the tiles could be picked up and washed and much easier to clean than the
carpet.  The tiles would also be too heavy for the little ones to move and
could be the colour of the carpet and all that, and the tiles were $1.50 a
piece so it was a cheap experiment.  It's been a huge success and I wish I
would have done it sooner.  Hopefully this little trick might help someone
else save their carpet, and save themselves time scrubbing.
 
Re: vegetarians
I've been a vegan or vegetarian (hard to go without dairy) for the last
eleven years, and I consider myself a part of the food chain and not above
it.  If I could stomach the thought of giving kisses to my fuzzies after
they had happily devoured a mousey and if they even seemed to like chicken,
which they don't, I would at least try the mouse idea.  My SO is a meat
eater, and I gladly cook meatloaf and whatnot for him almost every day.
Different people have different appetites, as do animals, it doesn't make
them any less or any better than the rest of their species.
 
Happy New Year, best wishes and many raisins
Robynn
[Posted in FML issue 2544]