(I apologize in advance for the length of this post.) In September, I got a ferret from a woman in one of my classes. She'd bought the ferret (as a baby) about 4 years ago for her son, and he now had to go away for a year and couldn't take care of it. She (the mother) didn't want to take care of it, and no one else in the family wanted it either. When I went to pick up the ferret (Nikki), she was in her cage in the garage (she'd been there for quite a while; she 'smelled too much' to be in the house). The cage had no litter pan; just cat litter in the tray beneath the wire bottom. The litter had been cleaned for my arrival, but there were cobwebs and dust on the cage itself. Nikki had been fed generic grocery-store cat food. She had two hammocks, but no other toys in her cage. She was very skinny - she felt like a sack of bones. The woman who gave her to me is very sweet, and was not intentionally neglecting Nikki; she just didn't know much about ferrets. To her credit, she said that Nikki was current on her shots; also, she was giving her to me because she knew that she couldn't take proper care of her, and wanted to give her to someone who could. I got home with Nikki and gave her a bit of Ferretone, which she took eagerly, while I examined her more closely. She had a balding spot on top of her head, and the fur on her stomach and chest was very thin. Her teeth were in awful shape: brown, dull, and broken, with the right upper canine completely missing and the left upper canine a near-translucent brown. She also had trouble walking. Every few steps, her hind legs would slip out from under her. I first attributed this to my slick hardwood floor, but it persisted even on carpet. There were small red scabs along her head and neck, down to her shoulders, and her skin was dry. I've been feeding her Iam's kitten food, and giving a bit of Ferretone every 2 or 3 days. She's more energetic, and seems to walk a little better, but is still terribly scrawny - when she curls up on her back, you can clearly see her ribs and sternum beneath her skin. The top of her head is still bald, and the bald spot on her chest is larger. The scabs and skin dryness are still present. When my check came in (mid-November), I took her to the vet. She did a CBC, skin scraping, vet (serum) profile, and creat/cortisol ratio (urine test). According to the vet, everything was mostly normal, except that she was a bit dehydrated, and a couple of things were a bit high or low. I have the results here in front of me (but don't know what all of it means), and ALKP, TP, and GLOB show up high, while ALT and CREA are low; everything else is normal. The skin scraping (Buffy Coat Profile) came back negative for external parasites. The vet also checked Nikki's eyes: the pupils did not respond to light at all, and the lenses are cloudy; Nikki is blind. Based on the urine test (creatinine/cortisol ratio), the vet said Nikki did not have adrenal disease. However, she did not know what else it might be. She thought the dry skin might be due to allergies, but that's all she could come up with. Nikki has almost all the syptoms of adrenal disease, except that her vulva is not swollen and has no discharge; also, the pattern of hair loss is backwards. The tip of her tail is bald, but also has numerous blackheads; her lower back has no bald areas. She usually seems to have little energy: when I take her out of the cage, she will walk around, sniffing at things, for 10-15 minutes, then go to sleep under the bed or crawl back into her cage and sleep. She's gotten more energetic - today we went outside and she walked and ran around for nearly an hour, but that's the longest I've ever even seen her awake. What might be wrong? Something's obviously not right; she eats and drinks well, but has gained almost no weight. None of her hair has grown back in. Her stool seems a little soft, but her excrement and urine is otherwise fine (she hits the litterbox more often than Seth). I can privately e-mail all her test results to anyone wanting to see them. I've read the disease FAQs, and it sounds more like adrenal than anything else... I read that there is no reliable blood test for adrenal disease; would this urine test be reliable, though? Should I have her treated for adrenal anyway? Should I wait and see what happens? Could it be some other problem?.... I feel like I don't know anything. :( :( :( Any advice or suggestions would be more than welcome!! Thanks, Joyce Meadows [log in to unmask] *([log in to unmask] after 19 December)* [Posted in FML issue 2156]