Let me tell you a story about a wonderful albino ferret, named Ozzie, and an equally warmed-hearted cat, named Rocky. Cats like ferrets enjoy the reputation of attacking or "stealing" the breath from babies. My story begins before our daughter Mae was born. We had been warned about cats and ferrets. No one could understand why we would want to put our newborn baby in such danger with having such animals around. We were also concerned by the fact that the cat had decided that the crib that we had put up was her new nest. We would chase her out of it every time we found her in it but she always came back to the crib to sleep. My husband and I had read the literature on how to introduce a newborn to your dogs that already in the family. Mostly it consisted of being sure to bring home a garment the baby has worn and let the smell and sleep with it. A Kinda fooling them into recognizing the baby by smell. We let the dogs, cat and ferret smell and sleep with some of our daughter's clothing and a blanket and the next day we brought her home. When the baby came, we started the introduction process with all of our animals and began to slowly introduce them to her. So under our supervision we brought each animal in one at a time and let them check out the new "pet". Everyone of them smelled her over and they all appeared to recognize her smell. She became at that point part of the pack that included the ferret, cat and three dogs. A little aside to this, we did tried to supervise her and the animals but I will tell you that is tough one to do when the animals do have free reign of the house. I recommend this to everyone that has animals and a newborn tin the house together, but one day I did find that I had left the baby's door open to her room while she was in there for a nap. I quietly stepped into the room and found not only our daughter curled up in the crib but the ferret and the cat laying on either side of her. They were napping too. After that I was satisfied that my animals had excepted her and were not going to do her harm. Now my reply to what Jack Hanna had said about the ferret attacking the baby. All animals have the potential to do anyone harm. This includes not only ferrets but dogs, cats, horses, pigs and anything else we bring into our homes as pets. If people don't acknowledge that and take the appropriate measures to introduce a baby to the animal part of the family then the potential for harm exists. Animals may view a baby a an interloper and a threat to the family unless you take loving measures to secure the baby's place in the household. Animals and babies are and should be a joy to have in your home but they are also a responsibility of ours to love, protect, feed and clean. If you can't do these things in order for them to be happy and healthily, why have them in the first place? [Posted in FML issue 2537]