Four years ago, we bought our first ever private-breeder ferret. Almost all our ferrets have been rescues, and we were hoping for genetic diversity and temperament and all that. So we bought Leeloo. She certainly has a lot of personality, a ton of genetic diversity (including New Zealand, as I understand), and is an absolutely great people ferret. We're absolutely in love with her. We want her to have a companion, but there's a backstory, so I apologize and I hope you'll bear with me. :) The problem is that Leeloo seems to be amazingly territorial. It took a *lot* of work, but we got her to accept another of our girls, B'Elanna. But, after sharing the same cage and playing together for *months and months*, all it took was one three-day separation for Leeloo to act like she'd never seen B'Elanna before. She attacked her. We had to put B'Elanna back with the others, who all got along fine. This type of rejection confuses me. I've only seen it before with wild animals like meerkats. After B'Elanna crossed the bridge, we tried to integrate her with Jazz and Luna, our remaining boy and girl. Luna fought with her a lot, screaming and squealing and neck-biting and shaking and all that. I would never have put them in a cage together. As for Jazz, Leeloo just *terrorized* him, and he never tried to fight back despite being a lot bigger than her. He just hid and shook, and I felt terrible. We decided after a fair amount of time that we couldn't in all fairness continue to make Luna put up with the fighting and Jazz with the bullying, so we separated them for good. Now we only have Leeloo, and for all the world she seems lonely and bored. Even though she never came into direct contact with the others after we gave up, she was often interacting with them through the bars of the cage, etc. We give Leeloo all the love and attention in the world, we let her run freely in the living room with us for hours at a time, and she really *wants* to run and play. But some of the wind just seems to have gone out of her sails since we lost Jazz a while ago and then Luna just over a month ago. We really want her to have a four-legged companion of the ferrety persuasion, and I may be off base, but I really *do* get the strong sense that she wants one of her own kind, too. I just have no idea how to accomplish that. If we try to get her a companion, we can't get a kit, since I'd worry for the kit's well-being. If we got an adult, we'd be in the same position as with Jazz and Luna. No matter *what* we do, I seriously doubt she'd take to *any* other ferret right away, but I'm willing to work. However, anybody we bring home would be getting a forever home from us, so I'd hate to have to declare it a failure and separate them into two cages. Then we'd have to take care of *two* onlies, so two would probably soon become three since we'd have to get a companion for the second ferret. Ferret math is insidious. It's so tough to explain -- Leeloo just isn't as happy as she was when there were other ferrets in the house, even though she fought with them and pushed them around! Does anyone have any suggestions? Or is it time to give up and just try to keep her as happy as we can on her own? -Natasha [Posted in FML 5719]