Hello All, Happy New Year!!!!!!! Ok, so I finally got my book compiled by Muldoone today and once again I read the story about Fiscus the ferret, and the one before the Rainbow Bridge Poem which was about taking the time now to look into your ferret's eyes, play with them, pet them, and get to know them. Now, my oldest ferret Frankie will turn 3 this month. My youngest, who knows how old he is, we estimate based on his teeth between 9 months and a year old. He was the one that ran into a vacant townhouse in November when the cleaning crew went in to clean and the maintenance guys called us. Well, Buddy is permanently ours now, and boy is he a handful, but so loved. He made number 9 for us. Anyway, I hold my ferrets everyday, every single one of them. I clean up pooty every day, after every playpen and cage switch. I feel like I love them more than I have ever loved any other being in my life. I dread the day that I know is inevitable when I will have to say goodbye to them until I can join them later in life. I read the story about holding them and paying more attention to them, and immediately I feel guilty. Why? Well, you see, we moved into our house Dec. 15. We gave them their own room-new carpet, so we tried to put linoleum down over top so we could give them run of the room. That failed miserably despite all that we tried to do to get it to work. So now, we've reverted back to all three cages in the room along with a Martin's playpen on a piece of linoleum. And why do I feel guilty even though I hold all of them at least once a day and I play with them as much as I can and I make sure they have clean cages and clean playpens with fun things to do? Because I feel like when we lived in our apartment and they were in our living room, we saw them all the time. They saw us all the time, now they're in a room and they see us when we pass by, or when we come in to love on them, or when we come in to switch playgroups. We are going to set up our Marshalls playpen in our rec room so that when we're down there watching tv, we can bring the playgroup down with us and interact more with them. That's nice, if our one group didn't have really talented escape artists. And I'm not kidding when I say they are talented. Believe me, we have a top to the playpen, one from Marshalls, and we velcroed it. They escaped. Our ferret sitter used clamps to keep it closed, they escaped. Our ferret sitter used 40 clamps to keep it closed-said it was like Fort Knox, they escaped. The little buggers escape too well. If we let them out to run around, they tear at the carpet. Fooey, vinegar/water, nothing stops my little buggers. They have a crappy hit rate when they're not in their playpens/cages, and that can be dealt with, tearing up new carpet that cost Mom and Dad $3000, cannot be dealt with, because I don't like to punish them (time out in the cage) for what they do naturally. Anyway, so I'm one guilty feeling Momma right now. My New Year's Resolutions include: -figuring out a way to make Momma feel less guilty, and my babies feel more loving and interaction with us by putting up that playpen I keep putting off. -Figuring out a way to ferretproof better so the babies can have more roam of a level of the house. -Going to church more (gotta please the in-laws, and let's be honest, we're having trouble getting pregnant, so it can't hurt to go right?) -Not getting any more weasels...........my longest streak without acquiring anymore was 9 months, and that was 1.5 years ago that we broke that one. Anyway, I hope you all love on your fuzzies tons, and never take them for granted. Happy New Year to you all. Jennifer [Posted in FML issue 5109]