Lee's Blog

Meerkats have a certain ferretty look to them. I’m glad these guys enjoyed their Halloween.

Wherein Sooty makes herself at home

I had a cage for Sooty, since it would be fairly difficult to pass her off as a caged animal without a cage. I left it open, of course, since I had no intention of actually treating her as a caged animal. I did put her food, water, litter box, and bedding in the cage, with the hope that she would come to regard it as home and therefore accept being locked in on the rare occasions when we had to act as if she lived in it.

It didn’t work out that way.

Sooty was perfectly willing to go in the cage for food, water, and litter box, but she declined to sleep in it. Connecticut is rather cold and the college was, shall we say, frugal with the heat, so my dorm room was very cold. It didn’t take Sooty long to work out that the warmest thing in the room, other than herself, was me.

Therefore, Sooty wanted to sleep as close to me as possible. If I was awake, she slept in my clothes. While I was wearing them, of course. She would clamber onto the bed (I had no chair so always sat on the bed to study), climb up my shirt, and slither down my collar and into my sleeve. I always wore a sweatshirt or a jacket with very loose sleeves, so she could curl up comfortably and sleep in my sleeve all day.

I never went to class with Sooty in my sleeve, but I would go to the store or run errands with her. The only time this became an issue was when I had to go to the Science Tower for something or other, and got lost. I ended up on one of the Biology floors, the one where they kept the animals. That woke Sooty up, and I had to hasten away, pushing Sooty back down as she tried to climb out of my collar, and hoping I didn’t run into any officialdom that might think I was absconding with a ferret that actually belonged there. Fortunately we escaped without incident.

If I wasn’t there, Sooty slept either behind the radiator in a nest made of my socks (which I kept retrieving for use, and she kept stealing out of my dresser drawer), or in my bed. Because it was so cold, I had four blankets on my bed, along with the flannel sheets, and she slept under the top-most blanket. I worried a lot that she would suffocate, but apparently there was enough airflow through one blanket to take care of her.

One would think that when I was sleeping, she would sleep behind the radiator, but not so. She would sleep in the bed even though I was already in it. Somehow I never rolled over on her. She was under the topmost blankets and I was under the rest, and no amount of thrashing around ever pulled the blankets under me. I made the bed up very carefully to ensure that this was the case.

In the mornings, Sooty would wake me up by walking up my side, planting her delicate little feet firmly on my cheek, and leaning down to lick my nose. At this point she would usually slide off, clutching at my face as she went by. This would assuredly wake me up. As you can imagine, I kept her claws properly clipped, in self-defense.

Sooty was my very first ferret, whom I got when I was a senior in college. The school had announced that we were no longer allowed to have “uncaged” pets. So I looked around for the smartest, most loving animal that I could pass off as a “caged” pet, and that was a ferret. So I went to the pet store at Penn Square Mall and found an adorable, affectionate little critter that I named Sooty.

Wherein Sooty goes for a ride

The pet store put Sooty in a little box, but I didn’t think that was quite right, so I let her run around the car. This turned out to be a bad idea, as she promptly disappeared. I practically tore the car apart looking for her. She had crawled up inside the springs of one of the seats.

Wherein I discover that ferrets are boneless

I took Sooty home and let her loose in my room with a supply of food and water, and a litter box. After a while of watching her and playing with her, I had to go down and talk to my parents. Pretty soon, my sister came down and said, “Lee, there’s an animal in the bathroom. Is it yours?”

Sooty had slithered through a crack under the door which I could not believe she had even got her head through, much less the rest of her body. I could only conclude that ferrets really don’t have bones, and in fact are a form of liquid.

Wherein Sooty plays dead

Pretty soon, it was time to go to college. I drove cross-country, and I had a passenger to keep me company. He held Sooty in his lap (since we had learned not to let her roam the car), and stroked and petted her as I drove. After some hours, we realized that she had gone utterly limp. I held her up, and her head flopped from side to side.

I thought she had succumbed to some awful ferret weakness, so I laid her on the grass while we discussed the situation. After a while, I noticed that her nose was twitching a bit, and pretty soon she got up and was ready to play. That was my first introduction to the fact that ferrets “sleep like the dead”. It is truly alarming to see.

So we got back in the car and went on to Connecticut.

Wherein Sooty claims her toys

I was assigned a little dorm room at college, so I immediately moved Sooty and my things into that room, and turned her loose to play (first inspecting for any tiny openings that she could slither through. I had five suitcases of graduated sizes which were hand-me-downs from my parents. I lined them up along the wall but didn’t unpack because I had to go fill out paperwork, sign up for classes, etc. So I left Sooty exploring the room while I took care of things.

After a while I came back and found Sooty asleep in the bed and four suitcases lined up along the wall.

Wait a second.

Four suitcases? Weren’t there five?

So I started hunting for the missing suitcase, casting dark looks alternately at Sooty and the door. It seemed very unlikely that someone could have come in and taken the smallest suitcase, but it seemed unlikely that Sooty could have taken it either.

Eventually it occurred to me to look inside the little closet that was part of the room, and there was the missing suitcase. Inside were Sooty’s toys. Apparently she had smelled them inside the suitcase and decided to put them away in the darkest corner she could find, suitcase and all.

To be continued …

Another ferret picture.

Update: And another one!

Such a cutie.

Want, want, want …

It’s so great to see them coming back.

How did they get these guys to sit still for this!

Ah, ferret videos. I could watch all day.

Want. Want. Want.

Baby ferret …

Otterly adorable