Dear Ferret Folks-
 
My dear Sabrina the Bat-Biter is blowing her coat this week.  The change
is startling!  She has always been a lovely chestnut brown sable with
dark mask and feet.  Now she looks like she has been rolling in the
fireplace, she is a silvery gray with dark mask and feet.  She has kept
the line of long guard hairs along her back, they stand up raggedly like
the plates of a cut-rate stegosaurus costume or a really ratty looking
mohawk.  She looks baaad.  She looks like one of those flat minks you see
on ladies coat collars from the fifties, the kind with a hook in their
nose to attach the back feet to.  (Yes, I know that this is a lurid
description, but Sabrina really looks baaad.  Not sick, just baaad.)
 
And oh, she itches.  Everywhere.  All over.  All at once.  Sabrina has
never been touchy-feely, though now in her golden years she has developed
an appreciation for the after nap cuddle.  She likes having her head
stroked while she shivers and rejoins the world at large.  Then she wants
you to put her down and give her her two Cheerios.  Now, please.
 
Last night she was laying on the floor of her room on her favourite old
towel, and I reached down to give her a scritch behind the ears.  To my
immense surprise, she did not shrug the gesture off, she arched into the
scritch, pressing her head against my fingernails tightly.  I pulled my
hand away and she gave me this look that she gives servants, she may be
blind, but her eyes are still the windows of her soul.  The look said
"What the h*** are you stopping for?  You have Our leave to continue,
sirrah."
 
Well.  That was certainly odd.  Sabrina has never liked being petted like
a well, pet.  But I reached down and did it again and she started using
my nails like a scratching post, rubbing her head against them furiously
as if she were in Girl Scouts ahd trying to make sparks for a campfire by
twirling a stick.  So I started scritching her all over, I have very long
fingernails.
 
I scritched her belly and I swear she started to vibrate, she showed her
wee fangs, her head thrown back in ecstacy.  Fluffy hunks of Sabrina down
were floating through the air now, little airy furry tumbleweels.  Then I
caught on, this wasn't affection, this was shedding frenzy!  She lay on
her side and I scritched her back until she wiggled back and forth like
a size seven ferret lost in a size nine ferret suit.  She rolled, she
writhed, she flattened, she blew her belly out huge like a lemon so I
could scratch it all over, she flipped over and over doing that alligator
roll, she was all over the place, eyes squeezed tightly shut in bliss.
This went on for about five minutes until she was surrounded by clots of
fur and weasel dander.  Finally, I think she was just too exhausted to
continue, she scrambled away and hid under some furniture, perhaps
needing the time to regain her dignity.
 
She is sleeping now, but maybe later I'll reach down and see if she wants
to go for another round.
 
Alexandra in Massachusetts
 
Switch the Kit: "What's WITH you today?"
Sabrina: "A little to the left, a little to the left, oh, that's nice!"
[Posted in FML issue 3902]