Charlie and the Kibble Mush Factory

And now, a word about Charlie.

We'd been feeding him by hand all week, as he hadn't shown much interest in food. Just wet, mushed up kibble (sounds delicious, right?) scooped up off our fingers, a little bit at a time, at various intervals during the day. It was just an upset stomach, we figured, and he'd get over it in a couple days.

And he seemed to be, as he was a lot better off on Wednesday than he'd been on Tuesday.

I wasn't home for a lot of Thursday, so that was a setback, but we thought he'd probably go for his regular food soon. He didn't. Not Thursday, and even yesterday he would seem interested in it, but never take a bite. So yesterday I decided I'd take him to the vet today. Kathy wound up taking him instead, because she's a hero, and also because the bakery a block away makes some of the best doughnuts we've ever tasted. Nothing fancy, but oh, so good. So fluffy and sugary and...

I'm getting off topic. My apologies.

Anyway, it turns out that there's a small foreign body in Charlie, which is upsetting his stomach. He'll be able to pass it, but we're going to be giving him antibiotics and something to ease his stomach distress for the next week or so. (And laxatives, which are sure to bring joy to the entire household.)

So Kathy brings Charlie home, $288 lighter from the X-rays and the medicine and the doctor's visit. And she lets him out of the carrier...

...and he goes straight to the food bowl and starts chowing down.

Great timing, buddy. But we're glad you're feeling better!

Rob

Water Weasel

This blog isn't going to turn into all ferrets, all the time, but I wanted to get this down. I had a dream about Gus last night. He was swimming, in a big pool where people were gathering to see some sort of music festival. I swam over to Kathy and asked where he was, and she pointed at a white streak under the water, some distance away. "There he is," she said. "He's fine."

I swam over, and he was playing under the water, doing flips and curling around like a miniature otter. He looked so much bigger under the water. And having the time of his life.

Rob

Mister Gus

Our good buddy—Gus, Mister Gus, Guster, the Bumble, Sweet Kisses—is gone.

This little white ferret lived a good life with us, entering our house with his three pals, Blink, the Dude, and She-Devil, eventually outlasting them all. For the last year or so of his life, he was a solo ferret, and a very good one. Being a ferret was what he loved, and he did it with pride.

Of course, he was a little OCD. That comes from being a ferret, I think. (I was going to say "anal," but that just brought memories of this.) There were a number of items that he obsessed about. He had a toy shaped like a jack that he tried to pull into a hanging hammock tube. He’d carry it in his teeth from the bottom of the cage to the top, rest it on the platform, climb into the tube and pull it. It was too big to get in, but he spent a lot of time trying. (And at one point, he even succeeded, bringing the jack through a slit at the top! A proud day.)

Then there were the jingle balls. They needed to go in the corner, in a little nook between the CD racks. We could shake the little balls and send them rolling around the room, and he’d unfailingly bring them to where he could keep an eye on them.

But his greatest accomplishment was Sweet Kisses. For Valentine’s Day, Kathy gave me a blue heart-shaped pillow that said “Sweet Kisses” on it, like one of those conversation hearts. Gus took a liking to it. (Or maybe it was hate. Who can tell?) Every day, he’d climb up onto the sofa, find the Sweet Kisses pillow and grab it in his teeth, and then jump down to the floor. Now, while it doesn’t weigh as much, the pillow is about his size. So when he would leap into the air, it was always a surprise how he’d land. Sometimes he’d land like he intended, four feet on the ground and Sweet Kisses in front of him. Other times he’d land directly on the pillow and bounce off. More often, his momentum would take him over Sweet Kisses, flipping him upside down onto the floor once the pillow hit the ground. Regardless, he’d still have that pillow in his teeth. He’d give it a shake or two, then let it go. Once it was on the floor, he could ignore it. (He did try to drag it into a corner once or twice, but the geography was a little too tight for success, and he gave up. Maybe he’d learned his lesson from the jack toy.)

These things could give us endless entertainment. He wasn’t much of a snuggler, but every now and then, if we were lucky, he would give us little kisses—particularly if Kathy had just eaten chocolate or if I’d just had a beer. And then he’d run off to fall asleep in a fleece in the corner, or behind the TV, or pretty much anywhere. He’d mastered sleep.

We miss him something terrible. There hasn’t been a day I’ve woken up since he died that I hadn’t had to work to pull myself out of bed, aware that I wouldn’t be able to get a hug from Gus once I made it downstairs. Just the same, I’m glad we had so much time with him… most likely, extra time. Last year he was pretty sick. He’d lost all the hair on his body (only his head was spared), due to symptoms from insulinoma. I worried about him every day. But our vet gave him an experimental treatment, an implant that would treat the disease. Soon, Gus was starting to grow hair again, and was certainly feeling better, too.

He had a theme song, of course:

Mister Gus! Mister Gus!

I don’t wanna cause a fuss!

But you’re so cute! You’re so cute!

In your little ferret suit!

You’re so nice! You’re so nice!

I’ll freeze you in a block of ice!

And thaw you out when it’s time!

You’ll see the future, blow your mind!

Mister GUUUUS!

(This was usually sung in several verses, some in Spanglish--“en tu pequeno ferret suit”--some with a Transylvanian accent, and so on. I’m not sure if he ever got the Captain America allusion.)

This last month or so, he started to lose strength in his hind legs. It went from a little wobble now and then to him not being able to count on them at all in a matter of weeks. We were giving him medicine to deal with the problem, but it wasn’t helping. And eventually, Gus decided he’d had enough. He started refusing all food, like it was medicine. We used a syringe to get some food into him for a little while, but eventually decided that he knew his body best, and was making a deliberate decision.

Oh, hell. All pet stories end the same, if you go on long enough. You don’t need to hear this, and I don’t want to tell anymore. What matters is this little fuzzy, fussy white guy brought a lot of love into our life, and I still can’t believe he’s gone.

Rob

Emmett and Fiona and Gus

L'il Fiona in the hammock.

As I write this, a cute little ferret named Fiona is playing with my foot. She’s a tiny, adorable little thing, sometimes sleepy, sometimes curious, sometimes terrified of a plastic cheerleader pom pom. She’s been in the house for three days, and I’m already crazy about her.

Emmett, a big moose of a ferret, won me over even more quickly. A climber, he’s managed to be on every horizontal surface of our family room, and pretty much every vertical one as well. I’m a little surprised he hasn’t tried to sell me exclusive photos of Spider-Man. It’s been a while since I haven’t been sure on which plane to look for a ferret; Emmett surprises me, wherever he goes.

These are both beautiful, amazing, friendly ferrets. We’re lucky to have them.

I worry, though. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t worry. It’s been three days now, and our original ferret, Gus, is still wary of them. For now, they’ve been sleeping separately, the new guys in one cage and Gus in the other. We let them out together, or sometimes Gus on his own, so hopefully he can maintain his sense of mastery of the house.They've swapped cages, voluntarily. They're growing accustomed to each other's smells.

Emmett, perched for trouble.

But when they’re out together… I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I was hoping it would be one big ferret party, with Emmett and Fi helping Gus get over his apparent loneliness at the loss of She-Devil. But what’s been happening so far — and it’s only been three days — has been something different.

Emmett has almost consistently been a gentleman around Gus. He’s much bigger, younger and stronger, but he doesn’t pounce on him, doesn’t play any overt domination games. And Gus doesn’t immediately go into intimidated mode, either. He’ll hang out at the food bowl, looking like he’s trying to ignore Emmett. Then they’ll walk around together for a little bit, with Emmett essentially shadowing Gus, and Gus looking like he’s walking away while trying to stay cool about it. I feel like I’m reading too much into their behavior, but that’s the vibe I get. Today, Emmett did, briefly, pounce on Gus a little, but I pulled him off and scruffed him and told him “No,” and then he let Gus alone until he was done eating. Then, afterward, they did the follow routine once around the room, and Gus retreated into his cube (a hanging cube-shaped hammock in one of the cages). Emmett walked up the ramp and looked inside – didn’t even poke his head in – twice, but Gus didn’t budge.

Fiona, on the other hand, might be a little afraid of Gus. When Gus looks in on her, she’s likely to squeak and hiss, which scares him off. I’m really hoping this gets better. He’s definitely interested in meeting her, but she rebuffs him – sometimes immediately, or sometimes after they share a bite next to each other at the food and water bowls.

Gus & Fiona on an awkward dinner date.

I’ve never been in this situation before, and neither has Kathy. We’ve never had to worry what our current pets will think of the new pets. We’ve never had to introduce them to each other, or anything like that. I really want to provide a good home for Fiona and Emmett – these are awesome, brave, curious animals – but the point of bringing them home was to help renew Gus’s golden years, not to stress him out more. We were afraid he was getting too bored on his own, but he might prefer being bored. As polite as they are — and they really are — they might be a little much for our little guy.

So I’m conflicted. We’ve got new pets, and they’re perfect, entertaining goofballs! I want to be thrilled. And instead, I’ve got this unsettled, wait-and-see feeling. Kathy and I might be ready for more ferrets, but Gus has to be ready, too.

We’ll see.

Rob

A Pretty Little Devil

Climb, She-She, climb!

We’re on vacation, so I don’t have any photos to share right now. But I wanted to write a little about She-Devil, our ferret who we lost a couple days ago.

She was a pretty little sable ferret, who we called “the beautiful lady.” (Or climby-girl, because of her high-altitude exploits. Or slinky-girl, because of the way she'd positively ooze herself out of the ferret bed, like one of Dali's melted clocks.) We got her several years ago, along with Gus, Blink and the Dude, from neighbors of friends, who found them too much to handle. And they were a handful, to be sure.

I always had trouble telling Blink apart from She-Devil. They were both sables, but Blink was a little smaller and lighter than She, and had a different coloration on her nose. They were so similar, in fact, that after Blink passed away, I sometimes imagined that we’d gotten the IDs wrong, and thought that Blink was adjusting to her new life getting called She-Devil.

She-Devil and me

But no, She-Devil was all she-devil -- in causing trouble, at least, though not in temperament. She regularly climbed up the outside of her cage, King Kong style, and then would peer over the gate that sealed off the family room, and drop the two and a half feet into the kitchen when we weren’t looking. Then, she could explore. She loved to explore, walking around not only the first floor, but climbing the stairs to the second floor so she could sneak around the office and our bedroom as well.

In later years, she gradually lost her sight completely. This did not deter her in the least. She’d climb, look around the corner, and drop into the dark, trusting that the kitchen floor would catch her. The only concession to her blindness was that, when she would leave her cage, she would walk the perimeter of our family room to make sure everything was where she expected it to be.

The Fab Four, piled behind a speaker in early days

I always worried about She-Devil. Part of that was that she was the oldest of our ferrets, and I think part had to do with the way Blink passed away. Blink got really sick, really quickly. One night, we noticed she wasn’t well, and resolved to take her to the vet the next morning. When I woke up to check on her, she was already beyond any help. There was nothing we could do.

She-Devil somehow spared us that. There was no feeling of helplessness with her; we were on vacation, but even our niece, who was ferret sitting for us, says that she just walked into her room to check on them, and She-Devil didn’t move. No prolonged illness; she just stopped.

She-Devil and Gus

Or that’s what it seems like to us, from the outside. Earlier in the year, She-Devil had a growth on the side of her face. The doctor said it wasn’t any trouble unless it interfered with her eating, but he could remove it if we liked. We’d worried about invasive surgery, so we didn’t opt to remove it until it grew to be about the size of a raspberry – it was like she was growing a second head. A couple of months ago, we removed it, and then a few weeks ago her stitches fell out. She was growing fur back in the places on her neck the doctor had needed to shave for surgery. For the first time in months, she looked truly healthy.

And somehow, the whole episode let me finally let go of the worry I’d always harbored. She seemed happy and well at last, and that’s how I’ll remember her. A dedicated escape artist, and a clever, brave girl who would kiss me on the nose a little almost every day.

We’ll miss you, She-She.

Rob

UPDATE: As you can see, I've added some photos of She-Devil and her friends. Here are also a couple links to some of her greatest hits.

Jingle Balls, Jingle Balls

Considering all the medicine that Gus has taken, I'm naturally a little concerned now that he's mostly off the meds. Especially since, although he was up and about when I left for the coffee shop this morning, he was dead tired, and extremely tough to rouse, once I got home and it was time to set the weasels free and give them their medicine. But when I finally took him out of his cube hammock (not so easy do do; it's much easier for him to climb out himself), he ran around like a good little guy. I scattered his jingly balls around the room, and he gamely gathered them up and brought them back to the corner he prefers they stay. And now, up here, I can hear him playing with them, lying on his back clutching a jingle ball to his tummy, batting it with his paws and making it ring. A happy, happy sound.

One more ferret medicine story and I might move on to something else:

The second day of giving Gus the bacteria-building paste, I put it on my finger and let Gus lick it off. (The first day, I hadn't realized it was paste and tried to squirt it directly into his mouth. It was like I was caulking the poor guy.) Gus enjoyed it, and happily lapped it up. Problem was, She-Devil was up and about, too, and wanted to get at it as well. I kept her away until almost the last of it was gone, but figured as a nutritional supplement, it wouldn't do her any harm, and let her have a taste. She loved it too, and battled Gus for the very last tiny glob on my finger.

As paste, it didn't disappear immediately, and she kept licking her lips. And Gus could now detect more of it on She-Devil than on my finger, she he started licking her, too. And for a moment, their tongues were out of their mouths, licking each other's tongues. Full-on ferret tongue-on-tongue porno kissing.

I don't think I've ever seen something so creepy and adorable at the same time.

Rob

Gus, You Can Exhale Now

We had a bit of a scare before the Mardi Gras party. Our ferret Gus was listless, and lacked his customary energy. So during our first big prep night, Kathy took him to the emergency vet, and got what amounted to an "I dunno" and some antibiotics. The next morning, I took him to our regular vet in Ridgefield Park. (She-Devil came along too; they needed their distemper shots anyway.)

After running some tests, the doctor told us that Gus had some blood in his stool, and very little of the bacteria that allow his intestines to work. He gave us a host of medicines: an antibiotic, something to settle his stomach, and some bacteria builders. The schedule was complicated: one thing he was to get once a day, another, twice, and two things three times a day.

Medicating a ferret when he doesn't want to be medicated can be tough. She-Devil is on medication, and is docile and pleasant, happy to get a treat afterward. Gus, on the other hand, trusted us less and less the more medicine he'd get. He peed on Kathy twice in a row when she tried to administer the antibiotic. "Yours!" she shouted.

I'd hold him, scruffed, away from me so he couldn't try the peeing tactic on me. He would swing his body like a pendulum, shaking to get away from the antibiotic, which clearly tasted horrible. It was like he was doing the twist in mid-air, except with claws. A lot of claws.

There was another medicine, sulcrafate, that didn't taste quite as bad (it seemed), but was still awful -- and worse yet, it was in a bulb dropper instead of a press syringe. There's no way to control the pace that the dropper expels its liquid -- especially when you only have a split second to make it happen. Gus would open his mouth, I'd put the tip of the dropper inside, and squeeze before he could push it away. He hated it, and no wonder: I was practically waterboarding him. For his own good, but it's not like I could explain that to him.

Anyway, that's all over. Gus is in much better spirits now, and much more active. We stopped the antibiotic after 10 days, and the sulcrafate has run out. (Another drawback to the bulb-dropper-built-into-the-cap system -- you can't close the bottle until the medicating is over; I knocked it over and spilled some when I reached for the bottle after Gus had wound me up.) All that's left is some of the bacteria building paste (which he likes) and regular droppers of Vivify (a nutritional supplement that he loves). So he's getting back to trusting us again. And I don't have to feel like a monster three times a day.

Rob

(Not sure where our camera is; this old picture of me and Gus will have to do.)

A Few (Not Very Deep) Thoughts on the President's Speech

He said, "I have appointed a proven and aggressive Inspector General to ferret out any and all cases of waste and fraud." While I always like hearing ferret as a verb, I can't help but think our ferrets can't find their own asses with two paws and a flashlight. (Gus seems to have no problem finding She-Devil's butt, though.)

During the first few interruptions for applause, Obama had a sour look on his face, like he'd rather address the press. At least they don't cut him off while he's on a roll.

Speaking of sour looks, did someone force-feed a lemon to Joe Lieberman?

There were some really nice rhetorical flourishes and turns of phrase in the speech, but my favorite was actually a new look at an old problem: "Dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country - and this country needs and values the talents of every American." It's unpatriotic to drop out. I never thought of it that way before.

But here's something I don't think I've ever heard a president say before: Curing cancer in our time? I haven't seen any bloggers mention this yet, but for me it was a moment of electricity. It was like Kennedy saying we'd go to the moon. We can do this. We must do this, and we need the will to fund the research and make it happen.

Rob

Because I Can

(Via Obomicom.me)

Rob

Vacation Overload

So we’re driving to North Carolina this weekend—the last leg of our first-and-only August Vacation Overload. Three vacations in a month, scheduled so close together to accommodate a lot of diverse schedules. Speaking for myself, my wife, and our two lonely ferrets, We Will Not Do This Again. We’ve had fun on our trips, but it’s not so much fun doing laundry from the suitcase to load it into a backpack to unload it, wash it again and load it into a suitcase. And I hate seeing Gus and She-Devil settle into their comfortable routine in our living room, knowing that in a few days they’ll be having to adjust to new surroundings again.

This is wearying on a number of different levels, even before we get to the ten hours of driving.


But ten hours of driving is exactly what’s looming in our future. Luckily, we’re breaking it up, stopping over with family on the way down, and friends on the way back. But that’s still a lot of driving, and we’re taking Kathy’s car because she has air conditioning. My car used to have air conditioning, but it’s been fixed and refilled a few times now and somehow the freon keeps leaking and I’m sick of wasting the money and putting freon into the world for no good reason and anyway my windows roll down so screw it.

(Years ago, my family had a car with a broken A/C and windows that could no longer roll down. My friend Chris and I took it car shopping one July day; it was our only way to the dealerships. At every red light, we opened both doors wide so we could get some sort of a breeze through the sweltering hotbox of the Reliant. It was so hot I was actually slowing down so I would miss green lights. When we stepped out of the car, it looked like we were climbing out of a swimming pool.)

Anyway, we’re taking Kathy’s car. Which has one obstacle:A stick shift.

So I suggested that this week we trade cars, so I can drive to work in her car and get used to the controls, since it’s really unfair and impractical to make her do all the driving for this vacation. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s that it’s easier to seep into my unconscious mind when I’m sleepy than at any other time of the day.

So this long post all comes down to the one point I wanted to make: There was a little bit of nervousness to my morning because of the stick shift, but nowhere near the white-knuckle terror of parking in the Canyonero.

This was really going to be a one-sentence post. Boy, did it go off the rails.

Rob

Someone Get This Man a Ferret.

The AP sez he needs one.

"Seriously... a cute little guy with a pink nose."

Rob

Beware!

I have a tiny scab at the tip of my nose.

My injury came the other night, as I was cuddling our ferret She-Devil, and she started kissing me on the nose.

Over and over again.

With her sandpaperlike tongue.

Usually, she only gives my nose a couple of licks. Not this time. Eventually, I have to assume that she tasted my blood, and decided to drink it.

Now, you might think, why on earth would I continue to hold this little fuzzy vampire up to my nose? To be honest, my nose didn't hurt at first. But then, all of a sudden, it started to sting. She was eroding my nose!

And I only am escaped to tell thee: Do not let someone erode your nose, no matter how cute they be. Beware!

Rob

She's Fine!

Kathy took She-Devil to the vet this afternoon. He gave her a full check-up, and apparently she's absolutely fine. Just living up to her name, scaring us to death.

And me? I'm happier than a pig in mud right now.


Rob

Remembering the Dude

I'm trying not to let this blog go to an all-ferrets-all-the-time mode, but I wanted to write a few words about the Dude.

When we first brought him and his pals home, two of them, the Dude (then known as the ferret formerly known as Snowball) and Gus, were wearing little collars with bells on them. We thought they looked ridiculous. We took Gus's off with no problem -- it was tight on his neck, but not too bad. But the Dude's was on really tight... and when I peeled it off, it came attached to skin and hair. We took him to the vet immediately, and had to keep him in isolation until the raw wound on his neck had healed.

It's not surprising that this nameless little tough guy immediately won my heart. He was the first ferret of the bunch we had to treat as an individual, not as part of a big, unruly group. We refused to call him Snowball (he was tan, for Christ's sake) but we didn't have a suitable name for him. But we had to call him something as he wandered into places we didn't want him to go -- so I called him "dude," until we realized that his laid-back personality and his earth-tone coloring matched Jeff Lebowski's.

He had a genius for trouble. His propensity for getting under our fold-out couch and coiling up in the springs (causing us nail-biting worry) led us to take the feet off the couch so it rested on the ground, and safety-pin its cover on. It took a lot to make that couch impervious to the Dude. He was a master safecracker.

He was also the ruler of the roost for a while. Once we put him back in gen-pop, he and Gus (accustomed to being the sole dominant ferret in his absence) had some legendary knock-down drag-out fights for dominance. Usually they involved Dude dragging Gus by his head or neck to behind the TV. A few years later, the fights started happening again; this time the heartier Gus did the dragging.

He had his own theme song, to the tune of a Budweiser commercial, I think:

(Here comes the Dude)
Here comes the Dude oh yes he's A-Number-1!
(Here comes the Dude)
Here comes the Dude oh yes he's nothin' but fun!

and so on, filling in rhymes as I went.

Over the last few months, I felt like I was seeing less and less of the Dude, even though I was spending more time with him than the other ferrets. We were giving him different medicines twice a day, some of which he liked, and some he hated. And by the end, he was so droopy that the only time I'd see the old Dude spark was when he was fighting off a syringe full of yuck.

But even then, I could just sit on the couch with him on my lap, petting him softly, singing little songs to him. I wish I could do it now.

Rob

...But It Pours

On Friday afternoon, we put the Dude to sleep. I've been meaning to write more about him all weekend, but it's been the busiest weekend we've had in a long while. So I'll write a little bit about him in a few minutes.

Right now, though, my more pressing issue is She-Devil. She's a ferret that tends to get into little scrapes. She's blind as a bat, but adventurous, able to climb the outside of her cage and cross the gate into the kitchen if we don't keep an eye on her. She usually does it a couple of times a night before she gives up.

Last night, I noticed she was trembling as I snuggled with her. She was acting strangely in other ways, too -- she stayed and the food bowl and chowed down instead of taking a couple of pieces with her and eating them in private. We speculated that it might be because she misses the Dude, although I didn't want to project my feelings onto her; a less emotional possibility was that she was stressed from being disoriented because there were all these scents around of a ferret she couldn't find. Eventually she went to sleep, and then I did too, leaving Kathy to deal with Gus and She-Devil before she came up to bed.

This morning, She-Devil was still trembling. We're worried she's in some kind of pain, and are bringing her to the vet today. As I left, Kathy was going to make an appointment when they opened. I don't know when it is, or what will happen there.

I'm terrified for her.

Rob

Some Days You Eat the B'ar...

Rest in peace, Dude.


Rob

An Open Letter to My Ferret, Gus

Dear Gus,

You know I love rubbing your belly. And you know I love rubbing She-Devil's belly, too, and the Dude's belly when he seems game. I think I've demonstrated, through my words and actions, that I love rubbing ferret bellies. It's one of my favorite things to do, ferret-wise.

But Gus, I can't stress this enough: When I'm rubbing She-Devil's belly and you start sniffing her ass, the whole dynamic changes from a little fun with my pets to some sort of human/ferret/ferret threesome that I AM TOTALLY NOT DOWN WITH.

Seriously, man. You're freaking me out. When I'm rubbin' bellies, keep your nose to yourself. I hate to have to call you out in public like this, but I've told you TIME AND TIME AGAIN, and maybe this is the only way I can get you to understand. This is NOT acceptable. I like you, but NOT THAT WAY.

Are we clear?

Yours,

Rob

Pilling a Ferret

It seems like we've found a solution for how to pill the Dude. Well, it's not technically a solution; technically it's a suspension, but it solved our problem, so it's both.

Pill Pockets didn't work for Dude -- he didn't have any interest in them, so there was no point sneaking a pill into one. On the other hand, we've come up with a strategy that gets most of the medicine in him and has only gotten us peed on once. (And by us, I mean Kathy. Phew.)

First, we grind the half-pill up with a mortar and pestle. We had one already, so we figured it was worth a shot. This reduces the pill into a much finer powder than crushing it between two spoons.

Originally the plan was to put it into a syringe with the Vivify vitamin supplement he was already taking, but it wasn't possible to get it into the syringe after the Vivify was inside, and we didn't want to contaminate the Vivify supply. So instead, I dumped the pill powder onto a spoon (inderectly; I use my finger to scrape the powder from the mortar onto a folded piece of paper, which I then tilt and pour into the spoon). Then I squirted the measured amount of Vivify onto the powder, stirring it around with the edge of the syringe.

Then I scruff the dude and give him his medicine. First comes a syringe dose of his prednisone, which he doesn't like but goes down quick. Then there's this pill/Vivify mix. I put some on my finger and rub it against his teeth and gums. He instinctively licks at it (and then makes a bleah! bleah! sound). I repeat this until the mix is done. He never likes it, but he can't help himself from licking it, either. So it seems like some of the medicine is getting in him. At any rate, more is getting in him than with our other futile efforts, and while he hates it, he's a lot less stressed out by the process than the other things we've tried.

Anyway, I write about this in such detail not for the regular readers of my blog, but because I did a lot of online searching for alternate methods of pilling a ferret, and didn't find much. So hopefully this will give someone in our situation another method to try. It's not perfect, but its the best one we've found.

It helps that afterward, we get to give him a medicine that he really likes. A spoonful of sugar, and all that.

UPDATE: Later on, we found a better way of getting the pill/Vivify mix into the Dude that we were all much happier with. I was able to draw the mixture from the spoon into a syringe with a wider nozzle. Then I could scruff him and give it to him usually in one squeeze, sometimes two. He still hated it, but it went down much quicker that way.

Rob

Gulp!

Another update on the Dude. He’s been eating better and gaining weight with a new medicine regimen. Kathy & I were giving him a shot three times a week, which I found a lot easier than I expected to. Also, there was a new vitamin supplement that he absolutely adored.

Then, last week, Kathy took him back to the vet. We were expecting him to get a biopsy on the enlarged lymph node near his hind leg; we’d vetoed the procedure last month because he was so thin and weak, but it looked like he’d be able to weather it now. But when Dr. Kim saw him, he said the biopsy was unnecessary; sadly, he was able to tell just by feeling the outside of him that it was cancer. At this point, our job is to make him comfortable.

The Dude’s big issue in the coming months will be liver function. Dr. Kim said the Dude could get along pretty much fine even down to only 30 percent of his liver function; after that, he would decline. So he gave us some medicine to take care of the Dude’s liver.

One medicine, thankfully, he loves. He takes it in a dropper and laps it all up.

The other medicine, however, is (half of) a pill. We still haven’t been able to give it to Dude successfully. We tried to pill him outright, and he put up a tremendous fight and got very stressed out and frothy -- and never took the pill, even if we got it in his mouth. We tried to crush it and put it in peanut butter. No dice there, either. Last night, I crushed it even more finely with a mortar & pestle. Then I gathered up the powder and put it into a syringe with a vitamin supplement he really likes. He ate the supplement, but the powder just became a glop at the tip of the syringe.

So I carefully added some water to the syringe. I hoped it would dissolve and I could use the dropper to get it into his mouth. After a while, it did dissolve, sort of, and I squirted some into Dude’s mouth. He hated it, but I tried to get more in before he squirmed away. I had dissolved it in a fair bit of water, much more fluid than I usually give the Dude at once. I squirted a bit more, and he started to gag.

That’s when I realized I was waterboarding my ferret.

Today Kathy plans to pick up some pill pockets—little pet treats with a hole to hide pills in. I hope that works tonight. I can deal with a necessary moment of unpleasantness to get some medicine down the hatch. But I have to draw the line at torture.

Rob

UPDATE: We've come up with another, fairly successful, method for giving pills to a ferret.

Dude Update

We took Dude back to the vet today. His weight was constant from 10 days ago... 1.3 pounds. (He used to be around 2.6.) His lymph nodes are still enlarged, and he has anemia. Meanwhile, his blood sugar is still high. So, we're cutting back on the pred some more, and hopefully that will help his blood sugar get under control, and it's possible his lymph nodes will shrink with fewer steroids in his system.

Meanwhile, we're going to start giving him injections of a medicine for his anemia three times a week. It doesn't seem like it'll be that hard to do -- they're tissue injections, so we don't have to find a vein, which would result in a very perforated weasel. After a month, we'll bring him back tot he doc, and hopefully cut back to twice a week on the injections.

It could be that the anemia is what's keeping him from eating. He has poor control over his hind legs right now -- a symptom of anemia in ferrets -- which makes it hard for him to eat food in its traditional spot in the cage. We've added a food bowl to the lower level, and with the shots, hopefully he'll get some strength back in those haunches.

I feel a little more hopeful* for him now than I have in the past few days. And, Kathy informs me, Dude is at the food bowl again while I'm up here typing this. Let's hope he keeps that appetite when he goes back in the cage.

Rob

*And now that I feel better about Dude, I might be able to blog again. I have trouble posting much when I'm in a funk, even though Kathy & I did something very cool last week that I've been meaning to write about here.