This is Susie Lee at the Ferret and Dove Sanctuary, Inc. to tell about
another ferret cancer victim, dear little Kiara Blondie who once had such
fine pale, pale blonde fur, when we first knew her, back in 1998.  Her
buddy back then, and for much of her life up until a few months ago, was
Nala Bubble-Bubbles Ferret. (this is always so hard to do).
 
We're adopting out another pair of doves to a nice young fellow who is
on radiation teatments for cancer.  Thin as a paper cutout, and he has
that bronze-green "cancer"-skin, but as sweet and optimistic as you'd
think it ought to've been impossible for him to be.  Makes me ashamed of
a few little arthritic twinges and a bit of breatheing trouble.  This
fellow actually reminds me of how those ferrets with cancer are, Just
like Nala had been, too,...perpetually cheerful and optimistic right to
the end.  Just like little Kiara Blondie Ferret who breathed her last at
midnight, last night.  She went into cheyne-stokes' respirations about an
hour before, during my last feeding for the evening, and I kept her with
me to her last breath.  She was 8 years old, had three Lupron shots over
the past year for extreme adrenal but I think the vet was right that her
cancer had metastacised all over her, and that's why she had been the
only older ferret on whom the Lupron shots had no notable effect.  Yet
none of that stopped her from going a million miles a minute, every
single day, right up to her last day, in fact.  I had her on my "feeder"
list not because she wasn't eating, she ate to feed her "adrenal"-high
nearly all the time, but to make sure she had supplements enough to not
burn out before she was ready to go when SHE wanted to.  Well, last
night, she was ready.  Now little Kiara Blondie Ferret is racing over and
around the Bridge towards her best friend-ferret in the whole world, Nala
Bubble-Bubbles Ferret, already there, having saved a place on the cloud
next to her for her best friend, Kiara Blondie.
[Posted in FML issue 4958]