I took Squirt to the vet last night for a newly-discovered lump on her tail. I figured it was probably a mast cell tumor. The vet did a needle aspirate and looked at the cells right there; she told me there were no mast cells in the sample. She said it looked like a fibrous tumor... and that the end of my poor baby's tail must come off! As of tomorrow (Friday) she will be a stump-tail. But the fact that she's losing the end of her tail is insignificant next to the vet's statement that it's a 50-50 shot as to whether or not this thing is cancerous. She also couldn't tell me how invasive it would be if it does turn out to be cancerous -- she said with fibrocarcinomas it's just too variable to give a definite answer before looking at the pathology report. Now I really am upset. Can someone give me more info on fibromas vs fibrocarcinomas? We will probably have to wait about a week for the pathology report to come back. I had never heard of such a tumor in ferrets -- only mast cell tumors. I am relatively in the dark here and not happy. :(:(:( -Tasha The development of our cerebral cortex has been the greatest achievement of the evolutionary processes. Big deal. -- Fox Mulder, FBI [Posted in FML issue 2117]