Fuzzball update

YEAH! Much happiness in ferret land. I took Fuzzball to a shelter to meet another ferret.

It's way out in the country, and I drug Anna along with me. I though that we were lost, but then we drove a bit further and found where we were trying to be. Fuzzball slept most of the way.

Fuzzball was introduced to a sable boy named "Chaos". He is a darker ferret, a sable. I didn't think that I would want to have a boy, but he was the first choice, since Fuzzball is an older, single woman and would be likely to have territorial issues with other females. They seemed to hit it off immediately, though Fuzzball probably hasn't seen another ferret since she was a baby at the pet store. She didn't know what to think of it when Chaos started playing ferret games with her.

OMG! What can I say? He seems like the perfect ferret! He's fuzzy and cuddly and completely malleable! He lets you hold him and everything and would even tolerate children and other pets! Fuzzball is usually too hyper for such things. (However, see below.) Hopefully Chaos will not turn out to be a cord biter or something when I get him home tomorrow. I have an appointment to pick him up at noon. The shelter has a mandatory 24 hour waiting period. I imagine it's just to make sure that you really do want a ferret.

The shelter was quite the place. I would guess that they had at least 30 ferrets, probably closer to 50. Very cute! Very odorous! There were also a number of very large, fluffy cats. One found a happy place on Anna's lap for the hour and a half that we were there. Nice people…they sure talk a lot! In addition, there's at least one dog and goat out back. The people were really nice…but eccentric as all such people must be!

I got a free nail clipper and 2 harness/lead dealies for free, which is pretty cool.

I also got the name and contact info for some ferret vets who hopefully will be able to help me make Fuzzball healthy. It's still looking like an operation will be the best option, but I need to get a professional opinion on that. The good news is that they were able to show me some ferrets at the shelter that were making a recovery, and they looked pretty good after only a couple of months.

This evening, I let Fuzzball run around for a while with her new harness, after I attached her bell to it. When she decided to curl up behind the easy chair, I scooped her up and clipped her nails using a trick that the shelter lady told me: You use this soybean oil based stuff. Basically, the ferrets like the flavor, so you lay the ferret on its back and put some of this stuff on its belly. While the ferret is licking its belly, you can clip its toenails without much trouble.

I also found out that pine and cedar (the two woods that the previous owners had been using for litter and bedding) have oils that are harmful to ferrets, so I'll have to stop using them. Fortunately, the shelter sells 40# bags of aspen pellets for $5.

After clipping her toenails, I let her run around for a bit, and after she curled up behind the chair again, I scooped her up in my arms and held her for about half an hour. This is the first time that she's permitted this for so long.

In order to clean out the closet to have a space to put the cage in, I took the door off the hinges and put it behind one chair and took the spare bed out of the closet and put the mattresses behind the couch. (Fortunately the mattresses and the couch are the same length and the mattresses on their sides are only 8 or 9 inches higher than the couch.) Then I draped some fabric over it so that it looks like some sort of display shelf, on which I placed all of my stuffed animals (they're for using in class to teach languages…honest). Fuzzball loves plowing through them all and knocking them off of the "shelf". Well, after I held her for half an hour, she played with the stuffed animals for a bit. As I type, she's curled up with them, sleeping. She's so cute! This is the first time that she's slept anywhere other than in her cage or behind the easy chair. She's in plain sight and only a couple of feet away from me. I wish I had a camera! SHE'S SO CUTE!!! She'll look even better once her fur grows in.