Hi folks,
 
Again, a gigantic thank you to everyone who responded about Phoebe's biting.
The latest:
 
We had Phoebe spayed on Monday and picked her up from the vet's on Tuesday.
It's now Saturday, and even in this short time the change in her has been
incredible.  She's still a frightened ferret, but she is definitely ceasing
to be a *mean* ferret.  Rob sat in the ferret room with her on Thursday
night, and she came out to sniff him, but didn't even make a move to bite.
She gently put her teeth on Rob's finger, but didn't chomp or even nip.
Later that evening she even stood at the ferret room gate and put her paws
around Rob's wrist to be picked up.  The other ferts are in the room now,
and Phoebe again has free run of the house, where the only other critters
are Sam the cat (who avoids her like the plague), and Buster, our alpha male
who's big enough to jump the gate.  As I originally suspected, there's a
very sweet little ferret in there, and with time she's going to be a super
part of our tribe.
 
Phoebe's four surviving kits were eating solid food by five weeks and Phoebs
had them completely weaned by six weeks.  We took them in for their first
shots and the vet gave them a perfect bill of health.  He also set up spay
certificates with us so their new families could pay for the initial vet
bills now and spay later, when they're older and bigger (the ferrets, not
the bills).
 
Three of them have found great homes already.  The little adventurer (got
out of the cage and started exploring at two weeks, with her eyes still
closed!), whom we nicknamed Magellan, went to a wonderful family who are
very experienced with ferrets.  The second and third went together to the
brother in law of a coworker (who's also a fert person).  They're living
only a couple of minutes away from our place, so we'll be able to watch
them grow up.
 
Our last little girl is kind of an oddball.  She's definitely the runt of
the four, and has very small eyes and poor eyesight.  We introduced her to
our big, laid-back, boy Buster a couple of days ago, and he followed her
around and washed and nuzzled her -- very much took a shine to her.  We're
calling her Hillary, after Sir Edmund Hillary, because she loves to climb
anything.  At any rate, we didn't want Hilly to be alone last night, so we
put Buster in the cage with her to see what he'd do.  A few minutes later
they were curled up together, and in the morning she was sleeping sprawled
out over a very contented Buster.  He's one of the best mannered ferrets
we've had (out of thirteen and counting), so we're hoping that his good
nature rubs off on her.  She's already starting to kiss more than she nips.
 
So if it turns out that Buster and Hillary continue to bond with each other
the way they are, we may just adopt Hilly from ourselves <g>.
 
Thanks again, folks.  We'll keep you posted on our progress with Phoebe.
Right now we're just leaving her alone and letting her wander the house,
and we've finally taken our workboots off and are walking around barefoot
like we normally do.  :)
 
Kind regards,
 
Kate and Rob (with Buster, Hillary, Phoebe, Jill, Putt-Putt, Poga, and
Zabaks....and Sam the big black cat)
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Toronto, Ontario, Canada
[Posted in FML issue 2367]