The Littlest Ferret

I wanted to take a few more minutes and write a bit more about Blink. She, like our other ferrets, was given to us by a family who had way too many pets to take care of. She was always the smallest of the group of four, and truthfully, the smallest grown ferret I’ve ever seen. I used to joke that she’d fit in a little teacup. My little teacup girl.

She was always an affectionate ferret – especially toward me. I could pick her up and she’d give me little ferret kisses all over my face. I think it’s because I’m a sloppy eater, but just the same, none of the others go so crazy about me. I’ll miss that most of all.

What happened was this. Blink apparently had gotten a blockage inside her somehow – probably from grooming one of the other ferrets. (Like I said, she was very kissy.) I guess because she was having trouble getting rid of waste, she lost her appetite and stopped eating. She seemed really light to us when we came home from Thanksgiving, and Kathy planned to weigh her periodically until we could take her and the rest to the vet on Friday for checkups. (We hadn’t yet realized she wasn’t eating.)

Then, on Monday night, Kathy picked her up for a cuddle, then set her down on the floor (a few inches above, actually – a height that any ferret would find a comfortable landing). Blink landed and sprawled on her side on the floor. She got up and wobbled around. Kathy immediately went to make mushy food with water and a bit of Karo syrup to boost her blood sugar a little. We fed her a little of the mush with our fingers, and she seemed to take to it okay. A half hour later, we fed her some more. We tried again before going to bed, but she wouldn’t take any more.

In the interim, her friends came by one by one to see her. To say goodbye, I thought, but I said “to say hi” out loud. I didn’t think it would come to that, at that point. I thought she’d pull through.

Our plan was for me to wake up around 3:30 in the morning to feed her again, and then we’d take her to the vet when it opened. When my alarm went off, I went downstairs and took Blink from her separate cage (we’d isolated her so she could have her own food) and tried to give her more of the mush. She actively resisted it – using what little energy she had to walk or turn away whenever I tried to give her some. I decided not to force her to eat. If she was blocked, I thought, she knew her body better than I did. And she was very clearly saying she wanted no more food.

Maybe she did know. She probably did, by then.

I went back upstairs, and dreamed we took Blinky to Dr. House. He (or rather, Cameron) was going to give her an MRI, but she started getting very active at that point, and House concluded that she couldn’t get an MRI because she had a little metal plate in her head from a previous injury. So then I took her to the doctors from Scrubs. They each were able to cure her in a different way, but when I got to Turk, and he had found a way to help her that left her walking on two legs like a little furry person, I thought, “This is one of those fantasy sequences, isn’t it?” And I know what those silly scenes set you up for.

When we woke up, Kathy made it down to Blink before I did. I heard her cry out from downstairs, and ran down immediately. Blink was clinging to life, just hanging on.

Until I got there. Within a couple minutes of holding her, she was gone for good.

I don’t want to tell you how we cried. You can’t imagine the noises I made, I sounded hollowed out, just howls echoing inside me. Eventually, we got ourselves together – a little – and buried her. Then we let She-Devil, Gus and the Dude out of the cage for a few minutes, and composed ourselves enough to go to work.

And now I’m back. And I’ve written a lot more than I’d expected to, but not nearly enough to do this little ferret justice. She was a sweetheart, a tender little friend. And while there’s a Blink-shaped hole in our hearts right now, it’s much, much bigger than she ever was. My little teacup girl, who always had a kiss for me.

If you’ve read all this, my apologies for being so maudlin. I wanted to get this down while my feelings were still fresh, and it shows. But I’ll close with a picture of Blink and me in happier times (with Gus as ferret hat).


Rest in peace, Blinky girl.

Rob