Mr and Mrs Wright

I have no idea where my fascination for ferrets originally came from.  Growing up, we owned dogs and the occasional cat.  The closest thing to an exotic pet that I can recall was a hamster named Misty we owned when we lived in Germany.  I have hazy, vague recollections of looking down into her little cage.

When I was in college, I had the pleasure of my roommate being my best friend so, subsequently, we roomed together every year.  Made housing so much easier.  Our senior year, however, she went to Chicago for a term (10 weeks) as part of a theatre program.  As a result, I procured a temporary roommate who brought with her not only a fluency of the Polish language but also an aquarium with gerbils and a small cage with a chinchilla.

Chinchillas are ridiculously soft, by the way.  It’s like petting clouds.

I suppose maybe that’s where my interest in owning some sort of non-ordinary furry creature came to be.

One day, she called me from the pet store where she was picking up a second chinchilla (because she had the crazy idea of breeding them) and told me the owner had two ferrets that he wanted to sell.  He said he’d sell them to me for $80 because they were already a couple of years old and had been abused.  Consequently, according to him, “they were mean” and he couldn’t sell them for the normal $130 you would normally pay for one.

I thought about it for about three seconds and agreed.  I’d had experience with abused animals.  Growing up, we adopted a Great Dane who’d been abused by his owners.  He wasn’t mean, he was just terrified of everything and you had to be pretty slow with him.  Try telling that to two little kids.  Despite my and my brother’s frenetic energy, Jake eventually calmed down and became an absolutely wonderful dog.  I knew that in a lot of cases, the “mean” that’s coming out from an abused animal is just defense.  They don’t know any different.

So I adopted two little ferrets and named them Mimi and Sophie.  That was the beginning of my love for ferrets.

It took about two months before I could handle them without getting bitten.  In that time, I discovered Sophie was deaf, which attributed to her heightened defensiveness.  If she could see  you coming, she was fine.  If you surprised her in any way, you got bit.  And I warned everyone who came to our apartment.  Mimi was incredibly sweet, would curl up in my lap while I was doing homework, and had a vendetta against my stuffed Pluto from Disneyland.

Sadly, I had to give them up when I graduated.  My dad said that I wasn’t to bring them to his house and gave some reasoning about his dogs attacking them which I think is partly true.  He probably just didn’t want rodents in his house.  The Humane Society took them and it tore my heart up to leave them.  They were both awake and watched me walk away, probably wondering what they did wrong.  I like to believe some kind soul, maybe someone with a kid, came along and adopted them and they lived a long, full, happy life in a nice household.

Fast-forward two years and, after living with my dad and then a roommate, I rented an apartment by myself in Decatur.  It wasn’t anything spectacular – a 2/1 with a small living room, a decent sized kitchen and a little back deck.  It was the perfect size for one person and rent was cheap.

After living there about three or four months, I looked up ferret rescues and found one in Decatur.  It was pretty cool, actually.  This couple ran it out of their home.  They had, probably, thirty or so ferrets in all sorts of cages throughout their living room and kitchen.  After playing with many of them, I settled on this little albino ferret and her sable sister.  That was the day I brought home Ilsa and Bianca.

I was immediately in love with them.  They were young and full of energy and so playful.  They loved to wrestle and chase each other all over the place.  Ilsa loved chasing toys and Bianca loved to burrow in mounds of blankets.  I could sit and watch them for hours.  They were little furballs of energy and the perfect companions to come home to every day from work.

Over the years, we all grew up together.  Stephen came into our lives and immediately loved them as much as I did.  He would sit on the floor and play with them all the time.  He’d pretend not to notice when Ilsa would crawl up on the couch and get her head into his coffee cup.  Not that she needed the caffeine.

About two years ago, Ilsa developed adrenal gland disease and had to have her left adrenal gland removed.  She was very sick, but, on a good diet and her meds, she continued to be active and playful.  Last summer, however, she started having seizures as it became harder and harder to control her blood sugar levels.  We took her to the vet for 24 hour observation where, despite heavy sedation, she had three seizures during the night.  The doctor said we could keep her under heavy sedation to control the seizures but that would be her life.  The look on his face said otherwise and, after lots of tears and long goodbye where I held her all swaddled up like a baby, we put her to sleep.

Hardest. Day. Ever.

A week later, I found out I was pregnant.

Out of the ashes and all that…

Bianca withdrew a little after Ilsa’s death.  She’d always been more independent of the two but she went through an antisocial period where she didn’t want anyone to bother her.  She was also getting older and slower.  We played with her when she’d let us, but, most of the time, she wanted to just burrow in her hammock and sleep.  She’d poke her head up occasionally to see if someone would give her a treat.

Almost exactly a full year from Ilsa’s death, I walked past her cage and noticed one of her claws was caught in her bedding.  I also noticed she’d accidentally gone to the bathroom in her bed and laid in it.  Stephen took her out of her cage and gave her a bath, while I put her bedding in the wash and cleaned her cage.  I refilled her food and water and Stephen put her back in.  She scooted around like ferrets do when they’re wet and eventually went down to the lower level to do some burrowing in the clean litter.  When the dryer was finished, I asked Stephen to put it back in her cage.

A few minutes later, he came back into the room and told me she was gone.

It took a moment to process that statement.  When the reality of it hit, my heart plummeted into my stomach.  I immediately went to her and we double, triple and quadruple checked to make sure.  She looked like she would wake up any moment with a “why are you touching me” look on her face.  But she was so still and so cold.

We buried her in the garden on the side of the house.  At some point, when I can bring myself to go out there, I’m going to put some stones around her grave.

Stephen dismantled the cage this morning and took it out of the house.  An empty cage with the door standing open is the most heart-crushing reminder.

This is all especially hard for me because her passing marks the end of a major point in my life.  Between my last roommate and meeting Stephen, that apartment in Decatur and those two little ferrets were two things I did completely and totally on my own.  They were mine.  Anyone who knows me well knows that is huge for me.  Bianca was the last remaining piece of that.

My brother-in-law put it best when he said, “She was a beautiful and feisty soul and I’m glad she has a chance to rest now and be with Ilsa.”

I imagine Bianca trundling across some hardwood floor to a super cozy hammock in a corner and sliding in its fluffy interior to curl up with her sister again.  I miss my babies so bad but I believe their souls are somewhere together again.