The other day, my friend brought his kitten over for me to sit for a while. With the kitten came a couple of toys -one catnip toy and one wind-up hopping toy that makes a clattering noise. "Perfect for the ferrets," i thought, and wound it up, took it to Noodle, and let it go. Now, there's caching behavior and then there's caching behavior. For example, a cheweasel that's out in the middle of the room gets picked up and dashed around from hidey-hole to hidey-hole as though the ferrets were looking for the safest place to stash it. "Nope, not good enough..nope, not here either." Then there's the stuffed animal in the middle of the room - OBVIOUSLY out of place, so it gets picked up and stashed with an air of "How'd that get there? That belongs over here!" And then there's the attitude the ferrets showed when they first saw the hoppy toy. No war dancing, dooking, or excitement - they just looked outright stupefied. And then, as a one, they all lunged for it and attempted to drag it straight under the couch with a very serious intent. Whatever this thing was (and believe them, they were going to chew it up in order to find out), it was MUCH TOO DANGEROUS to sit out in the open like that. I, of course, was laughing too hard to stop them (I recovered it later). They were even doing a tug-of-war with it. CLEARLY there are prize possessions that are unparalleled by any other. :) Melissa __ Melissa Litwicki ____ [log in to unmask] __ By the whole newsgroup devoted tennis showing it after scarfing fork and laughters [Posted in FML issue 2168]