Jude's Influence

   I was watching and playing with my baby, Milo, last night and couldn’t help but notice some of the habits he has picked up. I think for the first time I thought about what our ferrets teach each other. It gave me a smile. Jude, a sweet possum faced boy recently who recently passed away, was Milos mentor. When Milo first came, Jude disciplined him and taught him to behave. Jude did a very good job. Whenever Milo played too rough with an older ferret or smaller ferret, Jude jumped in and set him straight. He taught him the rules and order of the business. I noticed some other things Jude taught him, more on the personal trait side of things. Jude was a flipflop thief. All flipflops belonged to Jude and in Jude’s stash. He gathered them daily from the mud room and took them to a drawer in the kitchen. He lugged them to the back of the drawer and then up and over so they were behind it. I had noticed that Milo would on occasion go on these round ups with him. Milo would help him with the particular heavy ones that I often wore when doing the gardening. The two would work it through the kitty door (that went out to the mud room) with such coordination that it amazed me. They used the same teamwork to get it into and behind the drawer. I guess it was fun for Milo to be on the hunting spree with Jude, because after Jude passed the flipflop snatching stopped. That is until a week ago. Milo has set up his own stashing spot. To my joy it is much easier to get to….. Its under the dining table.

   Jude also had this habit of grabbing onto the twist crocks and trying to shake or pull them off. He always made such a racket doing this. Im not sure what his obsession was with those things. I was in the hallway putting away some towels in the linen closet and I suddenly heard this noise…so familiar...and so loud. Without thinking I walked into the ferret room to tell Jude to stop it and there was Milo….trying to shake the twist crock off its base. My eyes welled up.

   Milo was with Jude for about 5 months. In that time they were good buddies. Milo often slept with Jude and comforted him in his final days. It makes me happy to know Jude passed along a piece of himself….

Annoying Trait to Fond Routine

Tauvi
I know every day with her is borrowed time. She has always

been full of ferretude.
I think this is what keeps her going. .............Attitude like you

wouldn't believe. I expected her to have passed a while back, but just when I think her last breath will come any minute, she bounces back. Even at her worst she has kept her reputation as my ghetto girl. I'm sure if she spoke the human language you would hear the phrases.....
Oh nooo you di, nt
or
Girl don't be gettin all in my kool aid
or
I axe you one more times...yo! you gettin ma foods

or
You dis-in ma rat tail

She even has the head bob to go with it
Tauvi is the Queen and she knows it. She is never caged. The worst she is imprisoned (her words, not mine) is being confined to my room when I am away or at bedtime. There is a ramp next to the bed for her to use as often during the winter she will come and sleep on my chest or next to my side to keep warm. She is follicly challenged.
Due to her enlarged heart pressing on her esophagus, she has to eat soup or finely crushed kibble and to drink water she has to be able to lick it from droplets or shallow puddles otherwise it backs up in her throat causing her to gag and cough. Her water bowl is set up on a tray so she can splash the water out and drink it off the tray. On many occasions this way of having her water does not suit her. Her preference is to get it from the tub after I have taken a shower. Now, I don't take 5 or 6 showers a day so often I just splash down the tub and put her in it. She licks until her thirst has been quenched and uses a dampened towel hanging over the side to get out. Often at night....late at night ....when all good hoomins and ferrets should be in bed, she decides she wants water and not from her bowl. In these cases she will come up on the bed, find some vulnerable skin and give a nip. When I wake up (which is usually pretty damn quick) and scratch her head she runs down the ramp and to the baby gate where she starts to scratch indicating her Queenship wants FRESH water. She will scratch endlessly keeping a drowsey hoomin awake , so its just easier to get up, feed her demands and get back to bed in a timely fashion.

While this was annoying at first it has become a routine. Thank goodness not one of every night, but often enough. I will miss it when she is gone, just as I will miss her licking soup off my fingers and the gentle kisses this old girl with '

tude' give. I cherish each moment and ingrain these times in my brain so that the memories will always be there.

Tauvi and the Wild Ride of Emotions

What a roller coaster ride Tauvi has me on. I was ready to take her in last Friday and help her cross. Her eyes were tired but not telling me to let her go, at the same time she was not eating and had lost a lot of weight. I sat and had a chat with her, told her if she continued to starve herself she would leave me no choice. I told her I would give her the weekend to make up he mind. I guess she thought it over because she started eating soup again on Saturday night. I had to feed it to her off my finger, but she ate. I was the minimal amount of food, 5CCs but she ate. ...........and she ate some more before I went to bed. Sunday she ate 5 full meals and on Monday was up to 7 CCs each meal. Last night she woke me up at 2:30 Am for soup by nipping me on the arm. Damn it hurt and shot me out of bed. She hasn't nipped me like that in a long time. Today I put out some finely crushed kibble as I would not be able to make it home for lunch. I got home tonight and she had eaten some kibble as well as the 10 CCs of soup I just gave her. Her eyes are brighter and I can see me ghetto girl of attitude once again. (Don't let anyone tell you animals are stupid and don't understand. I once had a similar conversation with Emma when she first came here and was sick and very depressed. She too refused to eat and I made her the promise I make all my kids and asked her to give me a chance. She did) Tauvi has gained back 2 ounces and I am glad for the extra time I am being given with her. I know her time is limited.....but I will take what I can get.

Sweet Lielah

My sweet Lielah passed away in her sleep. This was so unexpected and caught me off guard. She and I had our normal pre-bedtime routine. When she got her last treat she asked to get down from my lap and with treat in mouth, scurried off under my bed to snuggle into the big blanket that was there for her and Tauvi. In the morning she did not come for soup when called so I set to looking for her. I found her.....on top of the blanket. She was still sleeping. Posed in one of those so often seen positions, lying on her back, head slighting curled to the side, one paw to her chest and the other reaching upward. Her sleep was an eternal sleep. Her little body was cold.

Somehow I think I expected her to go on forever. I'm not sure why. She was the picture of health outside, inside she was adrenal and on Lupron. Maybe I expected her to be here forever because I loved her so. She was my special one.......she was my sweet angel. There was never a bad or mean streak in her. She was just pure love and sweetness from day one. Maybe I thought she would be here forever because she was always so full of life.....and maybe....I thought...she would live forever, because I wanted her to.

I love all my furkids. Each for their very special and individual personality and each, for the silliness they bring into my life. Somehow...when Lielah was stealing a part of my heart, she managed to take a double serving. She was good at that. Her sweet face could always beg and extra soft treat....an extra N-bone.....and extra kiss .....and extra skritch. She was a pro. She could always play it just right.....lying on her back, looking up at you with front paws crossed........ climbing up to give a kiss on the cheek or the softest, and I mean softest touch of her paw on your foot or ankle. It never failed to work.

She will be missed and life around the house will never be the same....... but then it never is when one leaves.......maybe a tad more so with her.

Fly high and dance forever. I will one day meet you again to take you home to our Father above.

Polebean Massacre

Alexandra Sargent-Colburn is by far my favorite ferret writer. Her stories are always humorous whether they are her fictional stories or factual ones of her ferrets. I had to add this one to my blog. I laughed hysterically as I envisioned the events. I know those that have ferrets will understand......................

I've been on the road a lot over the last few days and that's unusual,I don't travel much anymore. This time of year my husband's work calls him up north to Bar Harbor, Maine. It's a beautiful place, and all the more beautiful this early into the tourist season. By mid-June, the crush is brutal. My husband's boss is happy to have the two of us go up in our camper, it doesn't interfere with my husband's work. Paying fora few nights at the Bar Harbour KOA is a lot cheaper than paying for my husband to stay in a hotel by himself. We bring the motorcycle, zip around. It's a good time. We go nearly every year.My excellent niece Sarah, now nineteen (how did THAT happen?) stayed at our house to look after the dog, the Noble Allis Chompers, Sterling the Silver Cat, the chickens, and the ferrets. Sarah is a fine ferret sitter, having been introduced to them as a little shaver when I brought my first two home. She gives them lots of out time, plays with them, and in general just uses good sense where the ferrets are concerned.Well, She has never dealt with the likes of Caff-Pow before. There isa reason I named him after the ultra-caffeinated beverage on the crimeshow NCIS. He is around ten, eleven weeks old and we all agree that he is a "Woodland Piranha." He is a mustelid buzz-saw, it's tiring just to watch him run around. Leap around. Climb around. Fly. Levitate. His daily routine makes me think of those aeronautic daredevils of the Roaring Twenties, the guys who would stand on airplane wings and hold on while the plane swooped and looped over an awe-struck crowd.Caff-Pow? Energy to burn. At this stage in his life he has no guile.Everything is right in your face, unapologetic. Immediate. If he wants it he does it. Or tries to.It was very *hot* today, up around ninety. Too hot for comfort when you are wearing a mink coat. We called Sarah (we were driving home) and asked for a special favor. Last year I grew a small crop of pole beans.I'd never tried them before. I set two wooden pole tripods on the edge of the garden, and the vines obligingly climbed up the poles. Long,dangly green beans followed. What I didn't understand was that you have to pick them young, or they are as tough as plywood. I got a great cropof plywood pole beans. I put them in Ziplocs and stored them in my deepfreeze out of Yankee guilt. Don't think we actually *ate* any.We spoke to Sarah and asked her to go get one of the icy bags of pole beans and wrap it tightly in a T-shirt with some duct tape, and slip it on top of the topmost shelf in the boy's cage, right below the top most hammie. That gives the boys a cool place to sleep, they really enjoy that on hot days. Apparently she could not find the duct tape. Shet hought that she could just make a few knots in the T-shirt and the one gallon Ziplock would be secure.

Hah.

Caff-Pow had *nothing* better to do this afternoon than untie the T-shirt, and wreak havoc. This is one of those telling events that separates the ferret lover from the ferret admirer. The author MarkTwain once tried to define what *experience* is. Experience is the difference between carrying a cat upside-down by the tail for a mile,or simply imagining doing so. Only one of these actions yields palpable experience. Sarah lacks some fundamental ferrret experience. There is abig difference between duct tape, and a few knots.We got home, and I went to check on the boys. Sarah had gone out. I could not help but notice the shredded, limp pole beans on *every*shelf in the cage, all seven plastic levels. Then there were the shredded, limp pole beans in the three hanging hammies. There were shredded, limp pole beans on the bottom of the cage, in the litterbox,just below the spout of the water bottle. There were shredded, limp pole beans in the round fleece bed. In the hanging sack. In front of the J-feeder. I don't think that much pole bean material had been consumed, it had simply been masticated. Great word, that. A fancy word for cheeeewed. Every one of those beans had been cheeeewed. And spat out, and left for dead.(Sigh.) It was the great Pole Bean Massacre of 2009. The horror, the horror.
Alexandra in MA

The Eyes Have it

Pheelia........my sweet Lady Pheelia.

Her body grows frail day by day. When I hold her, talk to her,or love on her, I hold back the tears. I have to be strong. Strong so that when she tells me it is time to go I can take her to the vets or hold her until that last breath slips away. My sadness is not just from know I will lose a family member soon but knowing what she was and what she has become. As recently as November she has gone from round, plump and dancing to frail thin and weak. Her will and spirit are so strong but her body so tired. I wonder if she feels trapped. I wonder if I am doing right by her in letting her continue on. I look into her eyes several times a day. They always say the same....not yet. I know the look. I have I have complied more times than I would like to. I wish for a peaceful passing, not just because it is easier on them, put because I am a coward and it is easier on me. I hate making that decision. I hate walking into the vets. I hate watching them being sedated and I hate watching the final injection. A fuzzy baby leaving rips out a part of my heart....the process at the vets, rips out a part of my soul. Woozles passing was on his terms. I held him as he took his final breath. He was in his home, a warm and loving place. He went quickly......he went painlessly. I hope for the same for Pheelia. ............ let her pass quietly in my arms in our home or with her cagemates snuggling up against her as she sleeps.

Pheelia.......my sweet Lady Pheelia....I am here to do your bidding

Life in the Ferret Lane

It has been such and up and down road......Pheelia still hangs in there. Her body is thin and frail, yet her eyes are still bright and alert. Pheelia is a little wobbly first thing in the morning but gains her footing quickly and goes about surveying her domain. A once around the room and she heads to the food bowl and eats her fill, still a hardy meal. She interacts with Lielah and Tauvi, giving little hops of happiness when one passes by with the other in hot pursuit. I almost expect those little spindly legs to break. Her dance is low key compared to her days of youth, you might even miss it if you didn't know her, but it is still a dance, and it is her dance. It lets me know she is still alive......still happy....still being a ferret. I know her time is limited. I try not to think about the end to much..... I pray that she will get to leave on her own terms like Sir Woozle did; in my arms, when he wanted to go and without pain. Until she is called away, each morning her sweet face greets me is another day to cram more hugs and kisses into her bags.

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Mayhem and Mischief, came to me in November (for those that have not been updates). They fit their names to a tee....... spit fires, always into trouble, rambunctious and always leaping on me when I walk into the room. My neighbor brought them to me when an employee of his could no longer care for them The are an added joy to my life. They gave Cassie some permanent companionship. My sweet Cassie Doodle Bug is no longer on her own. Watching her slip into a hammy with one or both of them makes me heave a heavy sigh on contentment. When my ferrets are happy, the world is at peace.

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Emma...oh Emma Bean...... I am so glad you have decided to hang out with me. My son brought Emma home. I thought we would lose her and I would have had my heart broken by a tiny little girl I only knew a week or so. She was sick, underweight and depressed. Her depression grew and whatever ailed her grew worse. The runs and an odor that would make a skunk run away. For what seemed like an eternity I force fed her and Sub Q'd her only for her to crawl back into her cage and curl up in her gator. Finally a morning came, her head was peeking out from the gators mouth. Was this a sign? Had she decided I wasn't so bad? She didn't fight me on the feedings that day and she actually took water on her own. Today, she eats on her own, drinks on her own and is letting her personality shine. Today she chased the cats. Today she played with Parker, my gentle giant. Today she dooked and clucked..................Welcome home Emma.