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no more ferrets
Jan. 16th, 2024 09:34 amWatson the ferret passed away. It was not unexpected, I wrote in December that he was looking pretty bad. 9 years old, deaf, mostly blind, hip issues, soiling his bedding, shaking, and multiple vet visits hadn't gotten us much improvement.
We had a holiday weekend for MLK and Marc let Watson out of his cage where he did his thing... trying to adventure out around the house but getting tired and laying down right in the middle of the floor. I threw down a clean fleece fabric for him to curl up in and said "Marc... HE IS REALLY STRUGGLING." As in seriously, he deserves peace! Can we please have him put to sleep! Marc said okay I'll call the vet. We talked about it at Christmas but Olive, age 10, was basically agreeing that we should not prolong his suffering but she asked me can't he make it to 2024? So we said okay not this week, but here we were two weeks into January and I was like okay family am I forcing this too much or what?
Marc basically agreed with me but he's also an oddly good caretaker, so he said "I've kind of got a routine now, I don't mind." This guy. He's better than me. When the kids were babies he changed more diapers, when they'd get hurt as toddlers he was the medic no matter how gross they'd cut themselves, he always knew what to do. So with Watson he'd listen every day, when Watson woke up he'd change his bedding, let him out for exercise, wash him off, clean the cage, feed him, hold him, watch him, get him back in when he got tired and curled up the blankets and towels we left around, run a load of laundry for the towels and fleece needed for the next day, it was an ordeal. Marc was like oh it's fine.
Sunday night Watson got out of bed, walked over to his food and water, curled up out there and died. Olive wanted to see him so we let her, and it made her cry, she's our sensitive kid, but she later said she felt better because she knew it had to happen someday and she knew she had to accept it.
Ferrets were fun to have, we went through three in this adventure, but they are complicated. injury prone, lots of health issues, hormone imbalances that get expensive to treat, they don't want to eat food that's good for them, they don't want to eat food PERIOD so you're always trying to get them to gain weight, they're okay but not great at choosing to use litter boxes, they demand to have run of your entire house. they don't smell as bad as people think. they're playful and entertaining, that's the best part. they have such nutty little personalities and they're so cute to have around. I'd do it all again, it's just so hard to tell people honestly what they're getting into, and just like every pet there is inevitable loss at the end that's hard on the whole family. at least we know watson lived a good long life with lots of happy years in our house and, we hope, lots of happy years in his previous house before we adopted him. he was a rescue so we don't know, but he would have had to have been loved by his first family once, and they loved him enough to rehome him, we're grateful for that.
We had a holiday weekend for MLK and Marc let Watson out of his cage where he did his thing... trying to adventure out around the house but getting tired and laying down right in the middle of the floor. I threw down a clean fleece fabric for him to curl up in and said "Marc... HE IS REALLY STRUGGLING." As in seriously, he deserves peace! Can we please have him put to sleep! Marc said okay I'll call the vet. We talked about it at Christmas but Olive, age 10, was basically agreeing that we should not prolong his suffering but she asked me can't he make it to 2024? So we said okay not this week, but here we were two weeks into January and I was like okay family am I forcing this too much or what?
Marc basically agreed with me but he's also an oddly good caretaker, so he said "I've kind of got a routine now, I don't mind." This guy. He's better than me. When the kids were babies he changed more diapers, when they'd get hurt as toddlers he was the medic no matter how gross they'd cut themselves, he always knew what to do. So with Watson he'd listen every day, when Watson woke up he'd change his bedding, let him out for exercise, wash him off, clean the cage, feed him, hold him, watch him, get him back in when he got tired and curled up the blankets and towels we left around, run a load of laundry for the towels and fleece needed for the next day, it was an ordeal. Marc was like oh it's fine.
Sunday night Watson got out of bed, walked over to his food and water, curled up out there and died. Olive wanted to see him so we let her, and it made her cry, she's our sensitive kid, but she later said she felt better because she knew it had to happen someday and she knew she had to accept it.
Ferrets were fun to have, we went through three in this adventure, but they are complicated. injury prone, lots of health issues, hormone imbalances that get expensive to treat, they don't want to eat food that's good for them, they don't want to eat food PERIOD so you're always trying to get them to gain weight, they're okay but not great at choosing to use litter boxes, they demand to have run of your entire house. they don't smell as bad as people think. they're playful and entertaining, that's the best part. they have such nutty little personalities and they're so cute to have around. I'd do it all again, it's just so hard to tell people honestly what they're getting into, and just like every pet there is inevitable loss at the end that's hard on the whole family. at least we know watson lived a good long life with lots of happy years in our house and, we hope, lots of happy years in his previous house before we adopted him. he was a rescue so we don't know, but he would have had to have been loved by his first family once, and they loved him enough to rehome him, we're grateful for that.
