Hi everyone, Its been a long time since I have posted. My mom has been very ill, and between work, the shelter, hospital runs, etc, I have no spare time at all. But I did want to take a quick minute to thank all our santas, pics and thank you's will be sent out this month to everyone. so please make sure I have your mailing addy, some packages came from a ups store, with no return addy! Its been quite a year, with 316 ferrets comming through our doors, but down from last year at 340! Yeah!! Now we have 83 in shelter and 23 fosters and one with our vet. This year was hard with the loss of Chyna Monkey, she was almost 11 years old, she was the last of my original 4 ferrets. Her loss hit me hard, very hard. I have been in a funk for a while so I guess thats why I haven't been online too much. We just got in a new arrival that my vet is diagnosing with DIM, please any info you can foward to me to help with his care when he comes home will be very helpful, Squinty Hott Stuff is a very sweet boy, and we are doing everything we can for him, he will be getting a tissue biopsy next week, he has already has Bw and Xrays done. Hopefully Dr.K will let him come home next week, this will be my first time dealing with DIM. On NYE, Robin took a very bad turn for the worst, she has survived so much, but her time is very close and I fear I wll have to lay her to rest this week, he loss will be more than I can bear right now. Please keep little Robin in your thoughts, she needs it more now than ever. her cagemate Repeat is frantic knowing she is so ill, I don't know what she will do with out her Robin. We too had a santa that didn't come through, she bought bedding from For Ferret Only with a stolen credid card, so Fuzzy and Fiesty had no presents. But they really made out ok, they went to a wonderful foster home and extra bedding was sent so they got new bedding and treats too! Now the company that had the order for the bedding sent it anyway for the shelter ferrets and took the loss on themselves, but the bedding is custom for a custom cage that we had in our garage that was donated weeks before. so my annie Bones group got a new huge cage with new bedding. I think it was wonderful for this company to send $200 woth of bedding with out payment, what true Christms Spirit. Please visit their website at, http://www.craftycreatures.com/forferretsonly/accessories.html. They are wonderful folks. i have so much more to say, but hopefully will have time later on this week. I had a long conversation with a friend of mine in corporate Petsmart, he called me asking me questions and talking to me about them selling ferrets, it was interesting to say the least. This person was there when I started my shelter in 1997 and was my boss and shelter vet at that time. so i did get a little inside info on the whole thing, but I'm sure only what he was told he could tell me. But I do know where some of the breeding stock came from and a few other things. So everyone, thank you all again for your support over the last year, hopefully I'll keep going another year with out burning out! Take care, CJ 24 Carat Ferret Rescue And Shelter "where ferrets are treated like gold" P.S. If some of this makes no sense, I'm sorry, I'm really really pooped out! [Posted in FML issue 4745]