On dying pets and the dilemmas of "replacing" them...

Kyle Heon — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 20:16:00 +0000

For the past five years my wife and I have had two ferrets. For the past two years a cat.

The two ferrets were purchased on the same day, we were told they came from the same litter, brother (Molasses) and sister (Coffee). The cat, my wife adopted from the local SPCA, a baby girl (Tigerlily).

Last spring (about this time in fact) we took the ferrets in for their annual checkup and vacinations. Molasses had been loosing significant patches of hair and we had done some research into what the cause might be. He was also getting more aggressive with his sister, biting her and not letting go. These animals are fixed before you can purchase them but these were acts of sexual agression for certain.

Our research landed us on the belief that he had come down with Adrenal Disease. The vet, with one look at Molasses, confirmed this diagnosis. We could have attempted treatment but that wasn’t necessarily guarenteed and expensive. The vet said that as long as he was still eating, drinking and going to the bathroom he was not in any pain. We were told that he would have good and bad days and that at most it would feel like he had a fever.

The time has come to accept the reality that he isn’t going to be with us much longer. He is completely bald short of a little hair on his arms. He is in the final stages of adrenal disease and can barely move around. He barely does anything but sleep. Maybe twice a day I see him come down for some water, pees and heads back to bed.

My wife, being the overly emotional one does not want to take him to the vets to have him put down. She insists that he will be better off dying with family. I’m not sure I agree but I’ll go along with those wishes. We suspect that he has maybe one to two weeks left. I am, however, not sure he will make it through the weekend.

We’ve been discussing the idea of getting another ferret, more for Coffee because we’ve read that once a companion dies the other one needs something to keep them active otherwise they go into a downward spiral themselves.

We typically haven’t been as good as we should be about letting them out for enough time during the day. They are little bandits, getting into trouble everywhere. We just had too much going on and too much in the way to keep track of the two of them. For the past couple of weeks though my wife has been letting them out to roam nearly the entire house (we shut the bedroom doors but the rest is theres). Coffee comes out and does her thing, even plays with Tigerlily. We had to monitor this for awhile because Tigerlily is much bigger and stronger but she has come around and is really good with her. We haven’t heard Coffee squeal yet (but Tigerlily did the other night and now keeps her distance as she realizes Coffee isn’t just a play thing anymore).

Coffee has even started using Tigerlily’s litter box instead of doing her business in one of the corners. This is great because it was my biggest complaint about letting them roam the house. So far she hasn’t gotten into trouble and my wife says that she barely has to distract Coffee from doing something she shouldn’t.

I’m hopeful that this continues as it would be nice to allow them more freedom. Ferrets are very high maintenance pets and they need to be allowed to roam, explore, and play outside of their cage. There are many ferret owners who don’t keep their ferrets in cages at all, some do. We always have but have also wanted to be able to allow them to run. My goal would be to let them roam as long as we are home and not sleeping. This would certainly give them plenty of outdoor time.

Today we were at the local pet store checking out the ferrets. They have five, all really tiny. We managed to get a really helpful associate, someone who has five ferrets himself and we explained the situation. Our fear was that if we got a new one would they be aggressive to Molasses and/or Coffee. He said that typically new additions, while much more active, fit nicely into the family.

They had two that we feel in love with. Another boy and girl. The boy is nearly all black, the girl a cream/coffee color, looking much like Coffee did when we got her. We left to think about it but I think we knew before we left that we’d be heading back, and this time being the proud owners of four ferrets.

My wife was, at first, very apprehensive about getting another one. She doesn’t want to “replace” Molasses. I don’t quite see it the same way.

The sales clerk said that they’d be going on sale (a markdown of $30 per ferret) tomorrow first thing so if we do it we’ll be there when they open to hopefully snatch them up before they are gone.

Update 3.26.2006 @ 9:30: Molasses passed away in his sleep sometime yesterday afternoon.

Update 3.26.2006 @ 16:44: We headed to the pet store for when they opened this morning and one of the two we liked had been sold, one of the managers bought him. We ended up leaving with the girl who my wife has named Fidget. My son and I really wanted the black ferret (a boy) who was incredibly cute and looked like a tiny little bear (of which we were going to call him Bear). I’ll keep checking the pet store(s) in this area looking for another one to add to the clan.

kyleheon.com: On dying pets and the dilemmas of "replacing" them...

On dying pets and the dilemmas of "replacing" them...