Dear Ferret Folks- My dear Sabrina the Bat-Biter is blowing her coat this week. The change is startling! She has always been a lovely chestnut brown sable with dark mask and feet. Now she looks like she has been rolling in the fireplace, she is a silvery gray with dark mask and feet. She has kept the line of long guard hairs along her back, they stand up raggedly like the plates of a cut-rate stegosaurus costume or a really ratty looking mohawk. She looks baaad. She looks like one of those flat minks you see on ladies coat collars from the fifties, the kind with a hook in their nose to attach the back feet to. (Yes, I know that this is a lurid description, but Sabrina really looks baaad. Not sick, just baaad.) And oh, she itches. Everywhere. All over. All at once. Sabrina has never been touchy-feely, though now in her golden years she has developed an appreciation for the after nap cuddle. She likes having her head stroked while she shivers and rejoins the world at large. Then she wants you to put her down and give her her two Cheerios. Now, please. Last night she was laying on the floor of her room on her favourite old towel, and I reached down to give her a scritch behind the ears. To my immense surprise, she did not shrug the gesture off, she arched into the scritch, pressing her head against my fingernails tightly. I pulled my hand away and she gave me this look that she gives servants, she may be blind, but her eyes are still the windows of her soul. The look said "What the h*** are you stopping for? You have Our leave to continue, sirrah." Well. That was certainly odd. Sabrina has never liked being petted like a well, pet. But I reached down and did it again and she started using my nails like a scratching post, rubbing her head against them furiously as if she were in Girl Scouts ahd trying to make sparks for a campfire by twirling a stick. So I started scritching her all over, I have very long fingernails. I scritched her belly and I swear she started to vibrate, she showed her wee fangs, her head thrown back in ecstacy. Fluffy hunks of Sabrina down were floating through the air now, little airy furry tumbleweels. Then I caught on, this wasn't affection, this was shedding frenzy! She lay on her side and I scritched her back until she wiggled back and forth like a size seven ferret lost in a size nine ferret suit. She rolled, she writhed, she flattened, she blew her belly out huge like a lemon so I could scratch it all over, she flipped over and over doing that alligator roll, she was all over the place, eyes squeezed tightly shut in bliss. This went on for about five minutes until she was surrounded by clots of fur and weasel dander. Finally, I think she was just too exhausted to continue, she scrambled away and hid under some furniture, perhaps needing the time to regain her dignity. She is sleeping now, but maybe later I'll reach down and see if she wants to go for another round. Alexandra in Massachusetts Switch the Kit: "What's WITH you today?" Sabrina: "A little to the left, a little to the left, oh, that's nice!" [Posted in FML issue 3902]