Dear Ferret Folks- For reasons unknown to me (what have I done to earn such kindness?) I have had an Anonymous Benefactor sending Todd the Butter-Butt and Caff-Pow free bags of Totally Ferret. The late, lamented Hebert benefited from this kindness as well. I am told by April at Totally Ferret that my Benefactor wishes to conceal her identity. Well, I have some *suspicions* about who my Anonymous Benefactor is but she wishes to be known only as "She-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named" when April and I speak. So she shall be. Thank you, whoever you are. Well, I got into a bit of trouble. I was out of Totally Ferret and didn't have it in me to be so crass as to call them up and say "Please send more." Not for *free*. That's just...pushy. That's how it felt. Pushy. So I thought "Well, I'll just go back to the usual stuff and either a new bag will come or it will not. I don't want to soak She-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named", who has already done more than enough." I got a bag of my usual ferret kibble. I will not be so crass as to name it. It has perfectly decent nutrition at a reasonable price. I have fed it for years with no apparent ill-effect. A few days pass. Hmmm. What's that smell? Have I neglected the backin' up box in the cage? (I just had an adventure with that, the boys water bottle didn't seal right and drained into the backin' up box and then emptied out into the plastic cage base. Wet newspaper, wet bedding, wet newspaper pellets, wet...you know. *Nasty* clean-up!) Hmmm. Fresh cage materials...where is that smell coming from? Bedding? No. Wash all the shelves, change a lot of bedding. Still smells. Hmmm. Is there a secret pile somewhere, a putrid mother-lode in the darkness beneath the furniture somewhere? I crawl around my house with a flashlight. One or two poos, but nothing that should be causing the odor. I eliminate the impossible, and am left with one inescapable conclusion. Fettets eating TF smell MUCH better than they do on my regular kibble, which has no fish-meal, by the by. Ferrets eating my regular kibble REEK. And this is the time of the year that REEKING becomes a serious problem. It is hot and humid. This is the time of year that upholstery smells bad, unless you are obsessive like me, and stay on top of the situation. Carpets begin to smell dank. I *hate* that. And I *hate* the way the ferret room smells. Enough! I called up TF and said "MORE! I will happily pay for it!" They are sending a bag, to which I look forward to with some eagerness. Now, I have not tried every ferret kibble available on the market. I am sure that some result in more strong odors than others. But in my experience (and as I write this my box fan in the ferret room is going full tilt boogie, gonna run the wheels off a the buggy, Martha) TF really *does* live up to it's promise, loosely defined here by me as "less stench." The boys look good, too. Caff-Pow is a like a Black Lab, Todd the Butter-But has lost that enormous kit butt and now look s like a sleek summer-weight Marshalls boy. The teeth look good. Eyes bright, coat soft, noses wet. Now, please do not take this as a shot fired over the bow of the Raw Vs Kibble debate. This is not an *invitation* to debate that, again. I feed kibble for my own reasons. But you better believe, I'm going back to TF. Not the cheapest kibble available, but does not have insane things like pineapple chunks, and oh, the olfactor side benefits are worth it. If other folks out there have something to add about which kibbles reek and which do not, I think that would be interesting reading. We all want the best for our Businesses. But we prefer not to smell them from twenty paces in August. Alexandra in MA [Posted in FML 6416]