As many of you read some six years ago when Byte-me was a kit, I had unknowingly set a love seat down on top of her where it sat on her for about 20 minutes before I found her. She was dead it seemed, and being midnight there was no place to take her anyway. I was totally wiped out with this loss and held her in my arms petting her lifeless body as I paced back an forth. I got a big plastic bag out to put her in and was going to put her in the freezer so she could be stuffed, but thought that was not a good idea. After about a half hour of holding her lifeless body and softly stroking her I noticed the slightest heaving of her chest ! She was breathing ! She could not lift her head and it took two more hours for her to move at all and all night to move her head. But she was alive! I kept her beside me all night where she lay so very still but alive. In the morning she did walk a bit but spent most of her time laying down so I had food and water next to her. In a matter of a few days she was moving almost normally but has a strange gait to her front shoulders. Now that she is over 6 years old and having survived all the other rescues I took in over the years being the only fert I have left, she moves around like an old woman. She is slower in her walk, the arthritis is in her shoulders so her front legs don't move like a regular fert, from that horrid accident she survived as a kit. She now is totally blind and walks into and off of things so I have to be careful of where she is. She is in the evening of her life. The thought of loosing her crosses my mind allot lately, is a very tuff thought but a very real one. I guess the thinking of her passing will temper the final act but will not make any of it easier. One gets so very attached to pets, and I am so very attached to this darn weasel I call Byte-me. Many have asked about her name. As a kit she bit horrid, and I almost got rid of her but all at once she stopped. The word BYTE is a computer term for a string of 8 bits making either a data or instruction. In today's machines we have 'words' that are of multiple bytes where the 8 bits were not enough in variables to support all the new instructions but she got her name from that and her biting. She sleeps with me every night in the bed, I find this warm lump under the bed spread and there she is, curled up. Usually have to move her to one side where that little thing takes up an entire queen sized bed.... Ha! So jus wanted to relate that story. From Gordon and Byte-me, please all have a safe and prosperous new year ! [Posted in FML issue 4746]