[Mark, your article arrived in almost unintelligble form. Your editor (or Compuserve or something) terminated each line with a carriage return instead of a newline (which is the standard on the network). I had to write a C program to fix it. After running that translation, I had to reparagraph it too. Please see what you can do to avoid this in future. Also, please remember to send it to "[log in to unmask]". CRL] My heart goes out to the owners of Frits & Cooper. Having lost a ferret to tumors myself, I know what they are going through. A word of encouragement: Adopting a new ferret will help you get over the grief, and your other ferrets are always glad to get a new sleeping buddy! We had a scare ourselves with Rupert, our 6.5 year old neutered male sable. For most of his life, he's had an enlarged spleen that never seemed to bother him much, so our vet pretty much ignored it. But a few months ago, Rupert started getting very sick -- listless, dehydrated, drooling a lot. Finally our vet decided that he was periodically injuring that big old spleen and it it was putting him into shock! We went through this three or four times -- our vet was kind enough to see us at all hours of the night and on weekends. Rupert would pull through with subcue fluids and prednisone. Finally, the vet said it was time for that old spleen to come out. Well, the last time we put a ferret under the knife, we lost her because her tumor was inoperable. So this time around, we were quite nervous about it. The surgery went without a hitch -- although the vet had to make a huge incision to get that spleen out of there. One of the vet's colleagues said the spleen was the size of a small dog's. Poor Rupert! No wonder he felt as bad as he did. That was a week ago. Rupert is doing fine now. Doesn't seem to miss that old spleen at all. We know he's an old guy, and that he probably doesn't have much longer to live, but at least he's doing OK now. [Posted in FML 0184]