Dear Ferret Folks- Sabrina the Blind Bat-Biter has been trying to tell me something for a while now, and I think I finally understand. Until a few months ago she was never the least bit cuddly, now she is content to lie on her back in my arms and look at me with her sightless, opaque gaze while I stroke her for a long, long time. I think she is looking far beyond me, over and away to where the Bridge is. She is so thin now, I can feel the shape of her bones right through her fur, curved and whorled like the lines of a chello. The end of winter has always thinned my ferrets down a bit, and that is normal, but this is not normal-or perhaps it is for a ferret who just recently has begun to feel the years. Her life has turned a corner in some way that I can't really explain very well, but I can see the change and it is profound. She is failing. I wish you could have seen her in her prime, deep brown eyes the color of raisins that shone out from behind her mask, a lush dark coat like her cousin the mink. She was sleek in the best sense of the word, and waddled from place to place like she owned them both. She reminded me of Elizabeth Taylor at her best, there was just something very red carpet about her whole demeanor. I have no experience with elderly ferrets. It is a journey we are taking together. For all I know, she will be like this for years, just to mess with my head. That would be so Sabrina... Alexandra in Massachusetts Switch the Kit: "Aunt Sabrina, you're really old!" Sabrina; "Yes, and I can still kick your ass, kid." [Posted in FML issue 3797]