(Sorry, girl, didn't realize you were in that hat  . . . )
 
Hello everyone!
 
I'm so glad to have discovered the FML, and am just hoping I can keep up
with the volume between all my other commitments.
 
Randy Brown, your story brought back such bad memories for me!  My Fatima's
problem wasn't quite that quick (turned out to be an ulcer), but the sheer
speed of fine one day, "are you coming down with something?" the next day,
and praying she'll live long enough to get to the open-at-midnight vet the
next was horrifying, even aside from the illness itself.  If there's one
thing I've learned, I'll never again think I can "wait till Saturday" to
take her to the vet, if there's even the remotest chance that something
might be wrong!
 
For the same reason, I would really like to see something happen with the
"ferret relief fund" and urge everyone to contribute.  I've only just
finished paying off the vet bill from the ulcer two Novembers ago (I've
still got several friends to pay off -- including the gentleman who
completely without warning was willing to drive me two hours to the vet and
put $300 on his charge card as a deposit!) and no one, no one needs to also
worry about where they're going to get the money for this, and whether the
vet will treat them without money in advance, when they're already going
crazy with the more important question of whether their baby's going to
live!
 
On a less frantic note . . .
 
To Lynn, thank you!  Your stories about Curtis were wonderful.  My own
Fatima's hunting exploits have been with snakes: a baby ball python who went
walkabout and was found headless beneath Fatima's cage -- we never did find
the head -- and a much larger and grumpier boa constrictor who was quickly
removed from the situation once I realized I was listening to TWO voices
hissing rather than one!  (Did I mention that four years later I could still
kill the boa's momma for not telling me he was loose in the apartment --
she'd said she was taking him out of town with her!) Luckily, the only one
harmed was me -- in my panic (Akhenaton at the time was eating rodents only
slightly smaller than the few-month-old Fatima) I stepped on some broken
glass!  Also, it's much easier to catch and isolate a big lazy old boa than
a spazzing and tiny young ferret.
 
I suspect she's quite lost any such instincts by now, but I'd still like to
see how she'd do with a mouse.  (hopefully, not violently!) After two
snake-less years in a heavily-mouse-populated neighborhood, I've finally
stopped thinking of them as snake food and instead as
poor-babies-to-be-rescued-from-the-marauding-cats, around ten of which li ve
on my street alone.  So when a couple of months ago, I looked up to see a
little brown sweetie sitting up on the same pile of my blankets that Fatima
often sleeps in, looking up at me alertly and innocently and clearly begging
to be saved from the two ruthless feline serial killers who live with us, I
actually had some notion of catching and protecting her.  'Twas
unsuccessful, and I found her corpse in the living room a few days later
(it's bad enough when they're strangers, much less when they've shown up in
your bedroom and politely introduced themselves!).  But it occurred to me at
the time that Fatima had been awake and about and had completely failed to
react the whole time the mouse was in the room.  Of course, maybe if she had
remained a predator, I'd have an easier time acclimating those two marauders
to her .  .  .
 
*blessed be* to all the slinkies
 
Sabrah n'haRaven ([log in to unmask])
and The Lady Monstress Fatima Katarani (also known as the Rani-kata, the
Kali-cat, my razorbaby-angelchild, and the Ronco Fold-a-Pet)
[Posted in FML issue 1545]