I'm sure Baldrick feels joy, love, excitement, as well as (hopefully much less often) sadness and fear. People who claim animals do not experience emotions probably do not live closely with animals. The nervous and endocrine systems in mammals (including ferrets) are perfectly complex enough to produce emotional sensations. Kelly Anspaugh said, >Those who believe in the supernatural have a theory about cats: that they >are "familiars," possessed of the spirits of people who have passed on. >Familiars can be evil (as in the case of the black cat that accompany >witches on their broomsticks) or good (acting as guardian angels to their >companions). Nothing against Kelly or her theory, but I would just like to point out that there is nothing about witches or their familiars which is necissarily evil; even the witches I know who have black cats don't seem to be any more evil on the whole than other people. In fact, it is an axiom among witches that when a "black cat arrives, good fortune thrives." Furthermore, just because an entity happens to be an angel doesn't necessarily mean he/she/it is particularly interested in the well-being of humans. Some of those angels don't give a damn about us, and would much prefer spending eternity gazing at the countenance of God than helping lost souls find their way. Not all angels are like that, of course ... I'm sure they can be very helpful when they deign to take an interest in human affairs. Just an alternative view. -Brandon Burt [Posted in FML issue 3160]