Greetings to all from Seattle! Brenda: I am so sorry to hear about your Ursa. I know how painful this must be for you. There is just no telling how cats and ferrets will get along. My fuzzies generaly ignore the cats and the cats just sit on the couch or a chair and swat the ferts heads when they pass by. Rosie, however, (the smallest of the ferts) will attack any cat that attacks her first. She won't give up until she has given him a good hard bite and the cat is hissing and sitting wide-eyed on top of a shelf or chair back. I guess our felines are just easily intimidated. Once again I am very sorry to hear about your loss and look forward to hearing about your next ferret friend. You aren't giving up on ferts are you? Also for the general group approval here is a reposting of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous as adapted for ferret owners (For those who are unfamiliar this is in the beginning of chapter five in the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous and is read at the start of most AA meetings): Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked for more ferrets with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of co-habition. Step 1: We admitted that we were powerless over ferrets - that our lives had become unmanageable. Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves (ferrets) was in charge of our lives. Step 3: Made a descision to give up and turn our will and our lives over to the tyranny of ferrets as we understood them. Step 4: Made a searching and fearless inventory of our ferret's hiding places. Step 5: Admitted to God, ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our ferret's wrongs. Step 6: Were entirely ready to remove all their poop from the corners. Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our desire to throttle the little monsters when we caught them chewing up the only copy of our term paper (proposal, bill, etc.). Step 8: Made a list of all people we had bored with the story of our carpet shark's latest adventure (but he looked so cuuute!) and became willing to make ammends to them all by giving them pictures of sleeping ferrets (look how he's got his arm wrapped around her...they must be in love). Step 9: Made direct ammends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would bore them or others unnecessarily. Step 10: Continued to keep an eye on the hiding places, hoping the car keys would show up eventually. Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our relationships with our ferrets as we understood them, praying only for the strength to play some more and the creativity to keep the ferts occupied. Step 12: Having had a realization that ferrets were the best thing since family and friends we tried to carry this message to others and to get as many more sharks as we could before our so's had a fit. Many of us exclaimed, "What an order! I can't go through with it." Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain a sour disposition in the face of a wardancing carpet shark. We are not sociopaths. The point is, that we are willing to have our family grow along ferret lines. The principals we have set down are guides to sanity. We claim limited sanity and little perfection... Our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas: (a) That we were ferretaholics and could not manage our own lives. (b) That probably no human power could relieve us from our our ferret obssesion. (c) That we really wouldn't want them to even if they could. Hope this brightens someone's day. Flip, Rosie, and Sparky (with Paul shivering in the corner "no...no...don't poop there...no...no...don't climb on that...") -- It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day the gates of dark death stand wide; but to climb back up again, to retrace one's steps to the open air, there lies the problem, the difficult task. Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which makes life seem so worth while to us now. Cling to the thought that, in God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have--the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them. [Posted in FML issue 1513]