Dear Friends - Just in case some of you missed this the first time - replace all of your water bottles with bird cage water dishes!!! There is no muss and no fuss, and the ferret likes it so much better... Slinky used to wait until he got out to drink from Leila's water dish, but now goes back into his cage to drink from his "big boy" dish. Imagine how frustrating it must be to have to lick a wet ball to get water. Also - a cute story about the cat/ferret relationship. I have always been proud of how Leila never went near Slinky's food (or so I thought). Then I took Slink with me when I went away for a week over the holidays and started to get upset over how little he was eating - until it dawned on me that he was eating his regular amount, and the rest was going to the sneak! Well, when we got back I placed his food in his hide-a-drawer, which Leila can't get into. After about 1/2 an hour, Leila meandered into Slink's cage and went to where his food dish had been - with both Elin & I watching. After not finding her dish, in her indignant cat way, she proceeded to hop up on Slink's sleeper shelf and curled up ("really - this is what I meant to do all along"). Imagine a large cat trying to curl up on a ferret sleeper shelf 8-)! Meanwhile, Slinky was watching all this wondering, no doubt, what in the world was going on... Best - Mason, Slinky (who has his cage back) and Leila ("no, really - it was very comfortable.... and where is that little blue dish?") [Posted in FML issue 1085]