I lost something today (06/20/05) that was very important to me, I lost my little Rosie. We got Rosie 05/20 from Animal Control about an hour away from us, someone had seen something about her on Pet Finder's and approached us about taking her, Rosie had been turned in to Animal Control as a stray. Rosie had adrenal disease and the director had made the statement if she was not claimed or adopted right away once she became available; she was going to be put down. She became available for adoption on May 21st and we went and got her on May 27th. Animal Control was aware of the fact we wanted her and knew about the adrenal disease and seemed to be a bit surprised that we were willing to take her with the adrenal disease. On 05/20/05 we went to get our little Rosie and as I was carrying her out of there in a beautiful new sleep sac just for her, I promised her a better life and all the love a little ferret could handle. We had no idea what her name was and I named her Rosie for her sweet and rosy personality. The following week somewhere, somehow her previous owners found out she had been at Animal Control and had been adopted by John and I. To make a long story short, all hell broke loose. The woman called me and left a message on my machine, and I called her back and she indicated to me she wanted her ferret back. I said okay...... but first I had a couple of questions I needed answers to before letting her go. I asked why her adrenal disease had been allowed to go on for so long and my other question was why had they not tried harder to find her. I found out later that from the time Rosie came up missing until she was turned into Animal Control was a full two weeks and how this angel survived on the streets, I will never know. When I asked the woman those two questions, she basically went off on me. I tried talking to her again later in the morning and instead I got her husband. I presented the same two questions to him and pretty much got the same reaction as I had gotten from her. He then told me if we thought Rosie was in bad shape, we should see another one they had, it was in much worse shape. The guy then threatened me..... I called Animal Control and spoke with the director and told him what was going on. All the paperwork was looked over closely making sure the proper number of days had elapsed before we adopted her and everything was as it should be and it was a legal adoption and Rosie was ours. Later that day I heard from their vet, Dr. T. called me and leaned pretty heavily on me to give Rosie back to them. To begin with I didn't appreciate him getting involved with all this and he basically called me a liar when I told him of the conversations I had had with the husband and the wife. Again, he more or less told me I was lying about them when I told him the husband had threatened me. I said fine, you call em then. But in that conversation, Dr. T. admitted to me they had done little to nothing to try to locate Rosie. They did call Animal Control 3 times in that 4-week period but neglected to leave a name or phone number just in case someone brings in a stray ferret. Dr. T. their vet called them and they went off on him so he said he wanted no more to do with the situation. We took Rosie to our vet and she had her pre-op exam on May 27th and surgery was scheduled for today June 20th. That was the soonest appointment we could get for her for the surgery so today was the big day. Doc said when he opened her up; she was a mass of tumors. She was bilateral adrenal and there was such a big tumor on her right adrenal gland, it had wrapped itself around the vena cava. He got the surgery completed but while Rosie was in the recovery phase, she began having problems. He still had her on the vent but her heart stopped and doc said he worked for 30 minutes trying to bring her back but her little heart could never hold a rhythm. Rosie was ours for just over 4 weeks. This beautiful little stranger who drifted into our lives and then out again, I miss her so much already. We normally stay at the vet when one of our ferrets is getting something done but this time we decided to come home and wait for doc to call us and then go back later in the day and pick her up to bring her home. Doc assured me Rosie was in no pain and she was a happy little girl with us. But as he also told us, Rosie would have been getting into serious trouble right away from the right side wrapping itself around her vena cava. For the life of me, I will never understand how she made it on the streets for 2 weeks. Why were we the ones who agreed to step forward and take her?? We knew we were already facing more than a few hundred dollars on the adrenal surgery and as we all know, as ferrets age, just like us, things begin to go wrong. We had taken in another fuzzy, Jewel who was thrown away by her family along with 10 cats and kittens. The manager of our local animal shelter contacted me and asked me if we would consider taking her or even taking her as a foster until she could get a forever home. Jewel is 6 years old and had been an only ferret and she went into shelter shock almost immediately and I worked day and night for about 2 weeks force feeding her and forcing Pedalyte. When we brought Rosie home, all the other ferrets picked on her so I thought hmmm, wonder if this will work and I tried Rosie and Jewel together and they were a match. Almost every morning I would find them sound asleep all tangled up in one another's arms and snoozing up a storm. Rosie and Jewel were very very good for one another and I don't know what this is going to do to Jewel; just as she had made a friend, found out what it was like to have a buddy, Rosie was taken not only from us but from Jewel as well. A few people told me I was wrong for not giving her back but the majority told me they felt I was doing the right thing. When I thought long and hard about it, my heart kept telling me not to send her back to those people. We knew from the get-go we were going to have to lay out some bucks on this little girl, if all we wanted was just another ferret, we could have gotten one that was healthy. As silly as it may sound, I made that little girl a solemn promise and I intended to keep it. I would like to think we bought her 4 weeks of happiness; she sure brought a lot of happiness to us. Aside from loosing her, one thing about Rosie really got to me; she wanted more than anything to be with the other ferrets, sleeping, snuggling, and playing with them but the others were pretty rough on her so we had to keep her separated from them. Rosie would work her little self silly to get out of the room where I had Rosie and Jewel, she would go right back among them trying to be accepted, unfortunately they would not accept her and I would hear her and go running to rescue her. Rosie had the most peaceful expression on her little face, in fact she looked like she was asleep and having a good dream. I had John to check her over to make sure she was gone, I swear I saw her whiskers twitch a couple of time. I gave Jewel time to say her good-byes as John was getting the spot ready. Jewel took a very long time saying goodbye. We buried her across the driveway where the others are buried and I told John I want to put up a rose treless and plant some climbing roses so I will see evidence of life instead of death when I look out my office windows. Rosie, we love you and miss you very very much BabyGirl. I guess it wasn't meant to be but we sure loved the dickens out of you in the 4 short weeks we had you. Rosie, you blessed our lives with your presence and we will never forget you. I can't begin to understand why you were sent to us, why we were put directly in your path. There has to be a reason we were drawn together and it lasted such a short time. Maybe I will find out the reason some day. In the meantime Rosie, I think Jewel is missing you a lot, maybe you can visit Jewel in her dreams and help her to keep on wanting to live and if you have the time, I would live to have you in my dreams. Goodnight sweet angel, we love you very much, Mom and Dad ~ To live in a lighthouse with a thousand ferrets ~ http://www.tuffyncompany.com/index.htm The nice thing about being senile is you can hide your own Easter eggs. [Posted in FML issue 4915]