Hello everyone, I haven't seen any activity on the ferret mailing list so I thought now might be a good time to pass along a little warning about ferrets and skin cancer. Apparently ferrets are susceptible to a variety of cancers and skin cancer is not uncommon. [I've been pretty busy... Sorry about that] We have three females, Zoot (5 years), Lupine (3 years), and Cutout (2 years). Zoot and Lupine are sables, Cutout is white with black eyes (I've heard that called a variety of things, which name is correct>?). This summer we noticed that Lupine had a small bump on one of her flanks. We (regretably) assumed that it was a bite or other minor problem and didn't give it much more thought. Lupine has an exceptionally fluffy coat so the bump was hard to find and we noticed it only by chance. A few months later we noticed a scab where the had been was so we took her to the vet. At this point we still thought it was just a minor problem and our main concern was getting making sure the injury didn't become infected. The vet shaved and cleaned the area and it was evident that this was no normal scab. It was a tumor that had become inflamed. The vet said that she had seen this in ferrets before and that it was not uncommon in older ferrets. She did feel that since Lupine was so young and the tumor seemed to develop so quickly that there was a good chance that it would be malignant. She excised the tumor and sent it for a biopsy. Thankfully it came back benign. Lupine's doing fine now, she seemed oblivious to the whole thing and she's once again fluffy all over. Remember, ferrets have a very fast metabolism. Illnesses can develop very rapidly and prompt treatment is important. Finally, I have a question. Our vet says that our youngest has already begun to develop cataracts. Our other ferrets are fine. I have read that breeders tried for a long time to get the white fur and black eyes combined. Could these cataracts be a sign of some genetic problems induced by breeding? "Don't drive too slowly." Richard Caldwell AT&T Network Systems nrc@cbnews att!cbema!nrc [You should get your mailer fixed - no "From:", "Date:" etc line.] [Posted in FML 0097]