To Amy Flemming, Mustard Charlie: I agree with you wholeheartedly that what you advocate by feeding your ferts natural food and not having them neutered until they are older is indeed the way to go; at least that has been my experience too. To Ducklite on ferts chewing cloth with those scissor-like back teeth (called carnasials) is a simple delight to a ferret and one that is so absolutely natural. I give my ferrets cleaned, raw chicken parts such as legs, thighs and sides of chicken and the first thing they so enjoy doing is tucking that chicken skin a way back into the corner of their mouth, rotating their heads down so their jaws are parallel to the piece of chicken they're working on and chewing with what appears to be utmost contentment. If you get close down to them you can hear the "squishing" & "crunching" of that tough, uncooked chicken skin being sheared into managable chunks and then swallowed down the gullet. Oh, how much they seem to enjoy that experience! So it seems to me, that chewing cloth is possibly the next best thing that a poor deprived ferret can substitute for shearing chunks of prey animal into swallowable sizes. Please let me recommend to you that you consider offering chewable food strips to your ferret as I do here at Ferrets NorthWest. What I do, and possibly you might consider doing also, is to obtain ordinary dog rawhide "bones" for you ferret after they have been prepared in the way I do it here when I'm cooking up the 3-gallon batch of my LUMPS (Meat/veggie soup). I soak the rawhide dog bone in an elongate can of salted, iodized water for 2 to 3 days and it becomes soft enough so that I can "unwind" it easily. I then cut it up into strips with a pair of strong tin snips (really heavy scissors, cause it's still pretty tough, depending upon the thickness), and then these strips go right into the pressure cooker as Lipinski's Ultimate Porridge Soup is being cooked. The rawhide strips take up the flavor of the LUMPS as they are cooked with it. Then after the cooking is done (very briefly at pressure to preserve the nutrient quality of the ingredients) and as I am running the LUMPS through the blender at FRAPPE speed, I take out these rawhide strips (Now called LUMPSCHEWS) and drape them over a screen to dry and become flexible after a while. Then, the next week or so I dole them out to the individual ferrets and watch them go to town on these LUMPSCHEWS, chewing, chewing, and chewing. In examining their feces afterwards I can never find any evidence of these LUMPSCHEWS as semisolids, so it appears that my little Frettchens are able to digest and assimilate them. Maybe if you tried this, then your ferrets would not chew on the cloth anymore. I know that's a big job to do, but of course if you have your ferret's good health in mind, you might give it a try. It sure works for me. Oh, and to those of you who are having health problems related to diet, may I suggest that you innoculate your ferret with germs. What I mean here is to get some germs like Lactobacillus Acidophilus, L. plantarum. L. bulgaricus, L. casei, Staphlococcus thermophilus, S. faecium, Bifidobacterium bifidum, and B. infantis. Most of these germs are found in ordinary yoghurt or in a product called PB8 which is used to maintain a healthy infection of intestinal bacteria in your ferrets intestines. These "germs" are very important in enabling your ferret to digest and assimilate his food. My ferrets get 14 billion of these germs every so often. Edward Lipinski from the Ferret Endowment for Research, Rehab, Education & Training Society NorthWest, aka F. E. R. R. E. T. S. N. W. aka FNW, established in 1981, and still just limping along. Don't applaud - no, just send money - Ha! PS. FNW is no longer affiliated with the defunct organization, Washington State Ferret Association (it's Director having absconded with most of the associations' funds), or with its subsequent sattlelite, ladies social club, the Washington Ferret Association, as of January 01, 2,000. The $20.00 annual membership fee is way too much for what is offered in my humble opinion. If others feel the same way, you may also decline future membership too. Maybe they'll get the message, huh? [Moderator's note: I remind readers that the above paragraph represents Lipinski's personal opinions. BIG] [Posted in FML issue 2922]