I have owned 2 cute little ferrets for about 10 months and sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving my Lorelei ferret started acting sick. We called the emergency vet because she had cold/flu symptoms and we had been told that this could be serious. Anyway, it was not a cold or the flu and she seemed to improve for a couple of days. Then she stopped using her hind legs and became very lethargic. We also noticed a small lesion on her right side just behind her shoulder blade. The vet initially thought it was some sort of bite, possibly spider or one of my other animals (though the dogs are never unsupervised around my little ferrets) and treated with antibiotics. When that did not get a response he removed the affected lymph node and the lesion and did biopsy the lymph node and lesion. He also did blood work and everything came back negative for cancer and other suspected illnesses. After many courses of antibiotics to be sure it was not bacterial she was treated with prednisone because the illness also mimicked inflammatory disease. Still no luck. All the while she continued to lose weight. She is just over a lb now and has maintained this weight for a little over 6 weeks. Basically, we are two surgeries, a zillion biopsies and every medication available to ferrets down the road and my vet is still baffled. He is a knowledgeable ferret vet, he specializes in cancer and has been talking to vets nationally and still has no clue. A few other vets had seen similar cases but all those ferrets died early on. I should also mention that her cage/litter mate is fine and healthy. Has anyone else experienced any kind of unexplained ferret illness? Right now she is on Interferon and it has improved her appetite but not her energy level. At this point my vet and I are both looking for any clues as this does not seem to be epidemic but isolated so no one really knows what to do. Thanks, Danielle [Posted in FML issue 4418]