Dear Ferret Folks- (This was supposed to be posted for wed., but was delayed by the unexpected. A six year old was involved. Sorry!) Yesterday I tried to give you a sense of how this year's hard winter is impacting my cat, Sterling. He of the silvery gray fur and extra toes. He is a very handsome boy with pale-emerald colored eyes and just the faintest suggestion of dark rings along the length of his tail. At eight pounds, he fills out his lanky frame nicely. He is well-muscled, and in the prime of his life. And he is bored out of his tiny mind, after being largely house-bound by the harsh weather for weeks and weeks. No mice, no birds, no nothing. Just day after day of bellying up to the wood stove, dozing in my lap, searching out sunbeams and watching out the front window for Mr. Princess Fluffy. He has gone from spending all day outside to all day *inside*, and the transition has not been good for his nerves. Especially not since the ferrets realized that "Hey, the cat's inside all of the time. We can make him our toy!" You see, the ferrets are not in the least troubled by the recent cold snap. It hasn't affected their routine one bit. They come out to play in late morning for a time, they come out again in the evening, just the way they do in the summer. Yes, the winter's cold has left them with beautifully lush, minky coats, but otherwise, life goes on as before for them. Except that the cat is *inside* almost all of the time. And he is a very fine ferret toy, indeed. It is Caff-Pow (It's always Caff-Pow, isn't it?) who takes the greatest delight in hunting the hunter. Caff-Pow only weighs half of what the cat does, and that is a generous estimate. I suspect that Sterling outweighs him a bit more than two to one, especially given the cat's winter bulk-up. Does that give Caff-Pow pause? Intimidate him in the least? Heck, no! Cat baiting is just plain good fun, even when the odds are insanely stacked against you, apparently. Once Caff-Pow is loose in the house and done checking his favourite spots, it's cat hunting time. The cat-baiting always starts the same way. Caff-Pow finds the cat, and chases him. Eventually the cat gets tired of running from the weasel, and turns to make a stand. That is when Caff-Pow changes tactics. He stops pursuit, and moves to stand *underneath* the cat. Not biting. Not being aggressive. Just standing under the cat's belly so that the cat becomes completely freaked out. The cat will even sit on Caff-Pow, the ferret doesn't care. He bides his time. The cat starts to panic, and bops Caff-Pow on the head with a front paw. Caff-Pow just blinks, and adjusts his stance *beneath* the standing cat so that his head is right under the cat's head. The ferret looks up, blankly, and stares Sterling down. Finally, Sterling becomes completely un-nerved and throws himself on his side while cradling Caff-Pow with his front legs and bunny kicking him with his back feet. Caff-Pow can endure this embrace seemingly forever, but after a time he nips at Sterling who immediately releases the ferret and runs away with a feline snarl of intense frustration. Caff-Pow follows. There is a chase, and again Caff-Pow situates himself maddeningly *beneath* the cat, who cannot handle this psychological torture and moves to kick the snot out of the weasel. That doesn't work. Caff-Pow doesn't care if he gets tightly wrapped up by four muscular cat legs and rolled across the floor like a tin can rolling in the gutter. That panicked embrace just allows him to nip the cat somewhere particularly soft, and the chase begins anew in another location. The other day the cat jumped up onto the coffee table to escape Caff-Pow. Caff-Pow followed immediately, and stuffed himself beneath the crouching cat who instantly leaped for the safety of the velvety green sofa. In that three second battle atop the table the two managed to knock hundred of pieces of a thousand piece puzzle that I had been working on atop the table for *days* ONTO THE FLOOR. The puzzle was completely gutted. I have since abandoned the effort completely, and swept the pieces back into their cardboard box but the damage was done. The pieces were flung about like shrapnel, and I will be finding them beneath the living room furniture for some time to come. Would someone be interested in a thousand piece rustic scene from Turin, Italy with a few dozen pieces missing? I think Sterling is starting to feel as if he has a few pieces missing. Pity, pity, the housebound cat. Alexandra in MA [Posted in FML 6577]