Cookie was helped to the Rainbow Bridge Friday evening. She was suffering from complications from surgery last month. Cookie was a beautiful champagne mitt, and we have the trophy to prove it. She won first place in a kit ring at the '98 Tristate Ferret Extravaganza in Cincinatti. Her trophy was a beautiful wall clock with a ferret face that hangs in our dining room. Cookie loved chicken gravy and sleeping in my dresser drawer. But my favorite story of her is this: Cookie was still a youth, and Belle was getting old, but still liked to play. We were eating dinner on the sofa while we watched the news. Joy and I sat on the sofa with our plates in our laps; Richard was sitting on the floor with his plate on the coffee table. We were eating pasta with a fresh tomato/basil sauce made from our garden. Cookie and Belle wrestled between us and the TV. "Look how good Cookie is!" I exclaimed. "She is playing so nicely with Belle!" And indeed she was, playing gently and letting the tiny frail Belle get the upper hand, er paw, in the wrestling match. No sooner did I praise her, then Cookie jumped up between me and Joy, up on the back of the sofa, across to Richard, down to his shoulder, and then leapt right onto his plate of food. Her momentum slid about a third of the pasta and sauce off the front of the plate. Cookie leapt off the plate, shoving another third back onto Richard's lap, and raced from the room. Joy and I broke into peals of laughter. "It's not funny!" Richard said sternly. We laughed more. "It's not funny!" he kept repeating. But Joy and I could not stifle our laughter as we helped Richard clean up mess and tracked Cookie down to clean off her paws. It was a year before Richard would admit it was indeed funny, and to this day will only do so reluctantly. Cookie is joining Belle, Caruso and Buttons, and is survived by Cassie and Andi. "Lay down Your sweet and weary head Night is falling You have come to journey's end Sleep now And dream of the ones who came before They are calling From across a distant shore Why do you weep? What are these tears upon your face? Soon you will see All of your fears will pass away Safe in my arms You're only sleeping" ["Into the West" words by Fran Walsh, Howard Shore and Annie Lennox] Linda Iroff Oberlin OH [Posted in FML issue 4424]