Two of the kids are going to the vets tomorrow. We are having full blood tests and x-rays. One ferret is a wisp of a thing I adopted last December. She trembles when I hold her, and looks too bony. Too delicate. Too fragile. The other eats everything it sees. He has heart disease. He is doing that thing mine do before they die. He has isolated himself. And none of the others want to sit or play with him anymore. I woke up in the middle of last night with Coco barking. I got some laxative down her. I put her in a carrier next to my pillow so I would hear if she was in distress again. I had already gotten up an hour before to feed Ginger some more baby food again with my fingers. Before that, the cat decided I needed to pet her under the covers. I was so tired...that sickening feeling of tired. Someone was shaking me. They were telling me I had to wake up. Two people I seemed to know...a man and a woman...urged me to go down to the basement. And so down I went. The ferrets were dying. I knew that somehow. We had been moving around from place to place, and I had allowed the ferrets to free roam everywhere. I had gotten sloppy careless, and not even kept track of where they were or of even if I had gathered all of them when moving to another area. This place was sprawling and dark. Had I even taken all of them from the last place to this one? I tried to remember where I had last seen each one. I could blurrily picture them running off down a hall or over some bizarre landscape. Down in this odd basement, one of my ferrets called out to me and cried out something about its tail. It was in terrible pain. The voice was weak...very weak. I searched in this groddy darkened basement that had old grey carpeting over the cement floor. I saw Bisquit. Bisquit was half under a couch that had no legs. His back legs stuck out. I lifted up the couch and found that the middle section of him had been eaten. The head lay still above the dark blood pool that was once the center of his body. Close by, the carpet had a lump that was moving...It was about the size of a large rat. I knew somehow that it was the animal that had killed and eaten Bisquit. I wanted to squish it. I searched for the white ferret who had called out to me. It lay warm, limp and dead on the floor in another area of the basement. I held it in my arms. The sadness washed over me. The two people I seemed to know were showing me all of my vitamins that were out of their containers in an odd wooden box. God knows if they were contaminated. Many were crumpled into dust. I needed to take the vitamins to get the energy to keep moving. But I could not take THOSE. I had to find my babies. I had to save the ferrets. But the two people were telling me I had to go to work. I could not miss a day. We were too booked. I awoke to the sounds of ferrets dropping something somewhere. Coco was still in the carrier. She was alright. I dragged my body out of bed and searched for everyone. Most were right next to the bed running through tubes and play fighting. They had opened a cabinet door and were moving out my light bulbs in their cardboard containers down the hall.It was 5 AM. I was so glad for the day. I turned on all the lights in the house, gave soups and meds and cleaned boxes. Then I played with the babies. We had a terrific time tussling in the bath tub that had towels and tubes in it. I was about to leave for work. But I heard screaming. Mini-Me was screeching that deaf scream because now Goober is tired of being threatened by her, and he was coming after her. I picked her up and kissed and held her and gave her some more soup before leaving. She stopped shaking and kissed my face. She is such an old gal now with no fur on her tail despite all the Lupron shots. She must have been really frightened by Goober. Because I went through 30 minutes at the office before looking at this dark stain on my jacket. Mini-Me had pooped right into my pocket. Oh The absurdities of life and dreams: [Posted in FML 5728]