I don't know what caused this, but I thought perhaps Bob C or someone else
with knowledge can help with information for "next" time I get a ferret...
 
My ferret Weasel woke up last Thursday with a strange symptom.  He was
trying to nap in my sons dresser drawer, and what I noticed was how he
wasn't very "comfortable"-- always moving and trying to arrange his nest in
a more suitable manner.  (Normally he just drops in a curl and sleeps, ya
know?) I was on the computer and noticed that he kept climbing out of the
drawer and going over my feet to the corner where we have his newspaper and
he kept trying to go to the bathroom without success.  I thought he might
have a hairball or something impacting his stool so I gave him about a half
an inch of femalt.  Five hours later he still had no success, so I
mentioned it to my husband at lunch how strange he'd been behaving all
morning.  Hubby said, "I noticed him doing the same thing last night!" so
when I got home I called the Vet.  Our usual vet was out of town for the
holiday and they recommended another guy in another city.  I ended up
dropping Weasel off just after lunch at that vet...
 
By 4:00 pm the vet was calling and asking permission for sedation.  We let
him sedate Weasel and the Doc tried to catheterize him and couldn't because
evidently his entire urethera, from the bladder opening all the way out to
the tip of his penis was packed solid with "grit" (that was the vets
terminology, not mine.) Doc called us back after the unsuccessful
catheterization and asked if we wanted to go the "surgical" route which
would involve a suprapubic catheter, (which the ferret would prob not want
to leave alone) and incontinence for the rest of his living days, and the
Vet said also that it WOULD decrease his "quality" of life to a major
degree with repeat surgeries and infections being a high probability, so
Hubby and I decided we'd have Weasel put down rather than make him go
through all that.
 
This was probably harder on my hubby than on me, cause HE was the one who
went and picked up his remains!  It's hard to describe how much we grew to
love our little pal in the ten short months we had him...*sigh*
 
I must say, for the awful experience we had to go through, the vets office
was absolutely wonderful!  They'd placed his remains in a nice little
casket-like box and he was very carefully wrapped up in his blanket
inside... He must've made a few friends in the last hours of his life
because they forgot to pack up his leash and when I stopped by the next
day to get it the office gal said "I'm sorry we forgot it yesterday, but we
were all just so upset..." They mailed us a sympathy card as well, which
touched our hearts...never had a vet do that before!
 
Now, my QUESTION for all you "experts" is: What do you spose we could do to
prevent this from happening when we get another ferret??  I'm assuming the
grit was from our water supply, perhaps calcium or lime buildup??  I've
heard that Reverse/Osmosis water systems can help people dissolve kidney
stones, and I'm wondering if we used R/O water on our next ferret it would
prevent this???  (I should note, we have four other pets all doing well on
our tap water, but we DO have an R/O unit which my hubby uses for his
business.)
 
Or was it something in his diet?  We used Totally Ferret dry chow with an
occasional bowl of Science Diet Kitten food and the only "junk" food the
little guy would touch was Craisins, and he usually got about 7 or 8 of
those in a day.  This was/is the ONLY time our little ferret had a health
problem.  Does any one have any suggestions to prevent this from happening
again?  Is this something ferrets typically have problems with?
 
Anyhow, thats what happened. Any ideas what to do for our next ferret?
 
Kim Latas
Spirit Lake, IA
[Posted in FML issue 2425]