Ferret antics and apologies.

We’ve slacked off on informing everyone that we’ve a new ferret — Polgara (Pole-Gar-Ah), whom we just call Gara (Gar-Ah). Her original name was “Chilly” and we adopted her from a local family a couple of months back. Due to her quarantine and some human health issues, we simply haven’t gotten around to getting pictures of her on here yet, for which I apologize.

While pogle was sitting in the playroom — poking ferrets with a felt-covered stick, causing joy and vexation all around — he apparently witnessed Gara climbing up onto the sick cage and leaping from the top (it’s about 2-3 feet off the ground). Down she goes…straight into the cornstarch peanut bin. He said she then repeated the action, quite deliberately. Crafty little minx!

State of the Business

Well, sadly our little business is just Ares and Millie currently. We’ve caught both of them sort of looking around aimlessly over the past week, likely looking for their life partners. Ares and Draco were together for years, and Minsc was the only ferret with the energy levels anywhere near what are needed to keep up with Millie.

Also, apparently Millie is extremely smart, and we just never noticed because she was too busy harassing Minsc before. The first playtime after we lost him, she promptly escaped from the playroom and ran rampant through the house. I’m expecting to find fossilized ferret poop in the oddest place in a year or two. She might be channeling Jack-Jack and his Houdini tendencies…

So yeah, she needs a playmate. She wears Ares out, then harasses me constantly, and is usually still going strong when I’m exhausted and ready to go to bed. She’s regressed somewhat on her bite training too, so I’m having to put a lot of effort into that once more; she was doing really good for a while, but lately is getting aggressive and chompy again.

It never rains, but it pours

Rushed to the emergency vet again last night…Minsc was extremely listless, unresponsive to most stimuli, and had a really low body temperature.

He’s warmed up now and they’re watching him closely. Doing an ultrasound and getting some samples…he’s got fluid in his abdomen, which is not a good sign. We’ll know more when they finish the testing.

Update, 1pm

The ultrasound, with mild sedation to keep him still, revealed that Minsc has an enormous mass on his liver. Its large enough that it is displacing his gall bladder and pressing on other organs. He also has from freestanding blood in his abdominal cavity. The liver mass has a very high index of being a hemangiosarcoma, a rapidly growing, invasive cancer of the blood vessel linings. In essence, it is a time-bomb that could rupture and kill him at any moment. And they tend to be inoperable, but the only way to know for sure is to attempt surgery. He also has a heart murmur, and his body temperature is still extremely low when they don’t keep him in the incubator. I don’t know that he could even survive surgery, so we don’t think it’s the right choice in this case.

We’re driving up shortly to say goodbye. It’s just not fair…

Draco is gone

More sad news…Draco passed away today.

We had taken him to the vet this week after noticing his weight was rapidly decreasing. The physical found pretty much nothing wrong with him at all, except the weight loss and some poor quality stool. The tentative diagnosis was IBD…with the usual caveat of potential lymphoma. Both are very common with ferrets, and both are difficult to diagnose accurately without surgical biopsies.

We opted to treat for IBD with metronidazole and vitamin B shots. He was on the meds for several days, and received them this morning. But tonight when I went to rouse the furkids for playtime, he was curled up comfortably in bed, and had passed away. The situation is pretty much identical to that we experienced with Ysabell, so it seems he likely had lymphoma after all, and something catastrophic happened, such as a rupture.

Good-bye Toe-cruncher…you will be missed.

News after a quick but expensive vet visit

Everyone is healthy, and they all have deslorelin implants to help prevent adrenal disease! (Minsc already had one, but got it refreshed; the others got their first implant.)

Pogle is working on recovering our stash of ferret photos off of our dead backup server; once that is done, we’ll get retrospective posts up for Minion and Zoe.

Until then, be comforted knowing that the other four are keeping us busy: *someferret* is stashing pogle’s boxers in the play tube. 😛

Minion is gone

We had to make the tough decision to let Minion go this morning. I will post more details later, but for now I just wanted everyone to know that he has gone. And behind him, he leaves a legacy of over 5 years of love and joy, and an enduring legacy that has seen us adopt 6 other ferrets thus far over the years, and will continue into the future of providing loving, wonderful, and exciting homes for many ferrets. Way to go, little buddy. We’ll always miss you, but you really had a good life and we couldn’t ask for better memories.

Minion Status

After a couple days of seemingly good recovery, Minion isn’t doing so well tonight. He has been a bit listless tonight, with little appetite, poor stools..and he threw up a little bit earlier. We’ve talked with our vet, and if he throws up again after this last feeding, he’s heading back in to see if there’s anything we can do for him. More as it develops.

Minion is back home

Well, that was an unnecessarily exciting weekend, in the worst way.

Minion had a perforated intestine! It perforated at some point several hours after the time when we rushed him to the vet, by her estimation…and he came within hours of dying from it. He also nearly died while she was fixing it, being in shock and suffering from sepsis in his abdominal cavity from the food and fluids that leaked out. His systolic BP should’ve been around 90…it was 25. It’s extremely lucky that he pulled through with all that suddenly went wrong. Our vet and her tech assistant are just plain awesome. A huge thank you to Dr. Powers and Christina, they saved Minion’s life again!

He came home this afternoon, and is recovering nicely thus far. He gets antibiotics and pain meds for a week or so, and goes back for a recheck in 2 weeks. We’re also having the 4 inches of his intestine that were perforated (and thus removed) sent for a biopsy, as they had small white dots that could be indicative of lymphoma. Better to know there so we can put him on some meds to keep it (hopefully) from happening again.

He also had a small pancreatic tumor as suspected (the insulinoma diagnosis) that was in an extremely difficult to reach place. She was able to remove that as well.

Thank you to everyone who contacted us over the weekend to inquire how he was doing. Hopefully his recovery goes without issue, and in the future months our old man can enjoy a less eventful time of things.