Hi to Amber, the person who was commenting on her new ones lack of coordination
 
This is in no way to be construed as a medical opinion, but I wanted to share
our similar experience. We have a very old ferret living with us. We don't know
much of her background but we are certain she is 11 1/2 years old and that
she nearly starved to death before she came to live with us (at that time
less than one pound - now 1.9 pounds). Anyways, she had a lot of problems
with standing up and walking and eating too. And she still does have some of
those same problems but they have seemed to improve about 90%. When she would
walk across the floor she would sometimes just kind of twist up and fall over.
She would stand, well actually kind of squat, at her food bowl chewing and all
of a sudden she would just fall over on her side like she got dizzy and lost
her balance or something. If she was sitting on a sweater on the floor she
would try and hop off the sweater and ended up diving right onto her head (I
think she thought she was off of the ground and needed to jump to get down.)
Well, anyways, I believe that this behavior was due to a lot of things.
She was very old (which could be the case with yours too due to your descrip-
tion of his teeth), she couldn't see well, it was a new place and she was
disoriented, she probably was dizzy due to poor nutrition. Granny has been with
us for about 5 months now and she has improved drastically. The first 6
weeks we really didn't see any improvement besides an increase in body weight
and we were sure she wouldn't last long. But in the last couple months
she has made great strides. We baby this little granny beast like you wouldn't
believe carrying her around in a wicker basket filled with towels everywhere we
go, hand feeding her and last weekend bringing her outside to play in the mud.
She is happy to be with us and to have brothers and sisters to curl up with.
What I find enormously interesting is that all of the others are pretty
much holy terrors and they fight and roll around and screech and cluck and get
in to all kinds of trouble but when granny comes around them they seem
to take on this air of respect and they drop everything to come play with her
but they go out of there way to be careful. When they bite her it is very
gently and they always seem to let her win. I think that is neat. Granny also
had very brittle hair and a bald tail, we brushed her everyday and sprayed her
with marshall farms coat conditioner and put vitamin E on little sore spots
she had as well as on the pads of her feet. She is soft as a powder puff now.
She likes Iams Maintenance cat food best and linatone but won't go for anything
else. Good luck, this little guy is lucky to have found you.
[Posted in FML issue 1168]