I've been crying over your posts for your little lost one...I usually don't respond to the "death notices"; I try hard not to take them to heart because they hurt so much. I've lost two ferrets myself and my heart has been left broken over their deaths even more than over human deaths, backgrounded as human deaths always are by the complications of human lives, no matter how loved or close the human was. But the cleanly, purely broken heart mends easier....the grief is clean, just as the cause of grief was pure. Our ferrets ARE purely what they are, uncorrupted by human judgments and expectations, and what they are is joy-in-life, innocent yet intelligent curiousity and expectation, energy and the love that truly bonds. When you've given them your BEST in return, it's useless feeling guilty when they pass on, just as THEY never felt guilty when they pooped wherever the spirit moved them! They loved your love, and with that love behind them they pranced over the bridge with the same optimism they had when in your care. And somehow they'll prance right back again someday, because with a ferret there's always a way. [Posted in FML issue 2408]