We have two animals in our house now.

Our dog is fat, lazy, and needs to lose weight. This is common in dogs her age, so we have a lower calorie dog food.

Our ferret is crazy, everywhere, and needs to gain weight. This is common in ferrets, so we have ferret food out all the time in addition to always trying to feed him treats (eggs, meats).

Big problem in our house is that they like each other's food. It makes sense why the dog likes the ferret food. It's high fat, high calorie, probably delicious. But I have no idea why the ferret likes the dog food. And our dog, being a sweetheart herd breed, just looks sadly at us while the ferret crunches down on her food. Sometimes we hear a bark but the ferret generally doesn't care. It's bad. If the dog eats ferret food it's usually a tiny bowl and the only downside is that the ferret can't eat it. But if the ferret fills up on low-calorie, filling dog food, he won't gain weight.

Today the ferret had food in his cage, upper level so the dog can't get to it, but still ran out as soon as he could to go investigate what was in the dog bowl. NOTHING, it turns out. So I took his bowl of ferret food over to the kitchen. Nope, he wouldn't eat it. So I dumped the ferret food in the dog bowl. Watson went to town. Ate a fantastic meal.

So maybe he just needs a giant bowl. Maybe he feels belittled by his little food dishes. in his head, he's a doberman.

Here are some photos of my dog Judy. I think I’ve decided to tell people she’s a medium sized shepherd collie mountain beagle? Never really figured out a great answer for that question but...



Features:

• Sheds tufts of fur even if I brush her and pile up a separate dog next to her in hair
  
• Sniffs everything forever
  
• Herds, tolerates, and checks up on other small pets
  
• Ears operate best in radar mode and can fold back for storage
  
• Snores loudly
  
• Latches on to houseguests who pet her, and assumes for the duration of their visit that they came over for the purpose of petting her
  
• But not into cuddling. Does not try to lean against you or get on your lap. Josie even tried pulling her onto her lap and Judy was just completely confused. If you sit next to her and pet her, she may place an affectionate paw on you.
  

more picks below the cut...

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We had our ferret, frankie, put down last week. It was not an easy decision and I don't know how to feel about it.

We got her off a craigslist ad just a year and a half ago, and she was skinny but seemed okay. The ad said she was about two years old. Ferrets are supposed to live 8-10 years. Our veterinarian said it's hard to tell age, but frankie seemed much older than two years. would craigslist lie, I asked?

Skinny ferrets are common, in ferret communities people are always trading tips of help them gain weight, but frankie was never all that interested in eating. she did not like treats like meat fat or egg yolks that our other ferret, watson, just gobbled up.

then she started losing hair and the vet said she had an adrenal disease, so we got her a hormone implant and that helped for about a year. then the year was up and she needed a new one, but this one didn't take... she was still losing weight and hair, so we tried another implant which the vet said was really rare, usually they just start working. and each time they have to basically cut her neck open for this thing and we'd have to monitor the healing, it was expensive. and poor frankie, right?

Marc had called the vet about her continued decline but was told there might not be much more we can do. Then on Friday he found her in worse shape, barely moving, wouldn't eat our drink or use her litter box (not that she's ever been great at it), yellowing spotted skin and she seemed to have a hard time using her back legs. our vet wasn't answering the phone. the message said they were closed, the website said they should be open, no call back by noon. maybe he should have GONE but they're all curbside only, and what would they do? so he talked to me then he took her to the humane society and had her euthanized.

I mean, should we have tried more medical stuff? She was scampering around a week ago, what if she just got some little infection we should have tried treating?

On the other hand the vet has gotten plenty of time with her and we've spent well over $1000 over the course of the year and she was never healthy, adrenal disease leads to cancer and is fatal.

And the other other hand, we have had small pets like guinea pigs that I think had too long and hard of a death. I kind of blame the vet for prolonging treatment, even when I said very clearly "I understand that it's a guinea pig." I was left guilty about what we made that little animal suffer through in the weeks that followed, after being told by a vet that a partially paralyzed guinea pig might get better. after that, marc and I told each other we would err on the side of euthanasia if we were in doubt. and this was really the result.

josie was very sad because even though frankie was sick and weird and hairless and pooped everywhere, she was our special little princess ferret and loved dearly, the ferret most likely to crawl up and fall asleep on you. I don't know what the right answer is.

For my birthday I asked my lj friends to ask me questions to inspire future entries.

dadi said I should post about the ferrets, which is a good idea. I'd post about them more, but a pet post needs a photo, right? And ferrets are impossible to photograph! But we managed to snag one, finally:

Frankie is the brown one, Watson is white.

I'll use FAQ format.

Why did you get a ferret?
My oldest daughter Josie became OBSESSED with ferrets - drawing them, reading about them, telling us about endangered wild ferrets, writing down care sheet instructions and plans. We tried to talk her down for well over a year. Her room became a ferret gallery. I think Marc has secretly always liked ferrets. I was skeptical. We have a dog. Dogs are the perfect pets, clearly designed by our creator to be our lifemates, they love us unconditionally, are the right size to be obvious, poop outside, and listen to some commands.

In 2019, one of her BFFs got a ferret. That family is a lot more pet-impulsive than we are, they've had lizards, fish, hermit crabs, hamsters, in addition to multiple dogs. But Josie was SO jealous, and the friend's mom said she loved the ferret, it was like a little designer dog except SMALLER!

Then Marc's friends loved her ferret drawings so he made one into a screenprint for a t-shirt, and let them all bring shirts and donate to her cause of getting a ferret. Yes, he helped her launch a fundraiser. Well then we can't exactly tell people that we're going drinking with the money.

The money was enough to get us a craigslist cage. We surfed craigslist for a ferret, and one came up in south Wichita. Marc and Josie treked out to meet another family that was apparently pet-crazy, a house full of dogs, cats, exotic birds, and ferrets. That is where we got Frankie.

Why did you get another ferret?
Josie asked to take Frankie over to her best friend's house for a ferret playdate. Her friend's ferret was Elliot. Frankie and Elliot immediately fell in love, spent the whole day frolicking and the whole night sleeping together in a pile.

Well, we felt bad that Frankie was alone, and we'd read plenty about how ferrets need a squad... or a "business", as a group of Ferrets is called. So this time we went on the humane society waitlist for ferrets, and one day Marc got the email and ran to adopt Watson.

Frankie and Watson immediately tried to kill each other and are mortal enemies. Still. Yes. Dammit.

Good thing we got a two-story divided cage.

Are ferrets like guinea pigs?
We had guinea pigs before. I thought maybe they'd be like that... but they are not. They don't eat vegetables, they need meat. Raw egg yolks are a good treat.

They also insist on exploring the entire house, top to bottom, every day. This is even harder for us since Frankie and Watson try to tear each other to shreds, so only one ferret can be out at a time. You let a ferret out and they make a run for it, sniffing every corner, bounding up the stairs, running under the couch on one side only to shoot out the other side. Sometimes you find them sleeping in a ball in Josie's drawer. Sometimes you're unloading the dishwasher and there's a ferret, staring up at you like it has something very pressing to ask.

Are they litter trained?
Kind of. We have litter boxes in their cages, one downstairs and one in the upstairs bathroom. I'm also happy we have hard floors.

Do they like people?
I'm not sure. I don't think so. They follow me around a lot, especially Watson. Watson tries to attack me though. I think. I'm not actually sure what Watson is doing, ever. Frankie is more likely to win the weirdo ferret staring contest, Watson is more likely to start jumping around like he's war dancing, then I knock him over and he wrestles with my hand like a kitten, all teeth and claws. But then he escapes, and jumps around, attacks the fan duster, a shirt on the floor, his own tail, then he goes totally flat like he's hiding, then he rolls over and hides under the dresser. Then he runs back out again and jumps at me, but forgets what he's doing and stops to scratch an itch on his side. Then he just wanders off. This weirdness happens to me 5-10 times a week... attack ferret springs out of nowhere and I decide to either engage and play, or just grab him and he chills out in my arms as he's carried back to his cage.

Then he either goes to sleep, or gets pissed off about the cage. If he's mad he flips over his food and water bowls then slams them noisily around until we let him out again.

This is definitely not something guinea pigs would do.

Do they go to the vet?
Yes, they get vaccines, including a rabies shot, and an annual checkup. It's about $100 a year.

Plus $200 a year for Frankie's hormone replacement therapy. Yes you read that right. I can't say it with a straight face. I told Josie we could buy a lot of new ferrets for that... but whatever. After we'd had her for a while she was losing hair. We went to the vet who said she had a life-threatening adrenal gland disorder and needed a yearly Suprelorin implant to prevent hair loss, swelling, loss of appetite and other terrible things.

They came to us spayed (Frankie), neutered (Watson), with scent glands removed. That last bit about the scent glands is the scariest thing to me, because they smell terrible. I can't imagine what they'd smell like at full strength.

If they're carnivorous hunters, can they hunt mice?
That was an internet rumor, but they've 100% failed at our house so far.

They're running around underfoot, aren't you worried about stepping on one?
A little bit, but they're sturdy. And they're fast enough they kind of get out of the way. We probably shuffle around the house these days without even thinking about it. Both Marc and I have been doing normal things, and kicked a ferret straight in the face. They look up at you like you're the biggest asshole, and you apologize and say "WHY ARE YOU HERE?" and they keep staring until you reach down and give them a head scratch. Then they run off to do something weird.

Do they play with toys?
They like to take things and hide them, especially squishy things. Every time I take out the bottom drawer of Josie's dresser I find a weird ferret stash of nerf bullets, bouncy balls, hair ties and who knows what else. They clearly have a plan for all this stuff.

FRICK I saw a mouse run across our kitchen floor early in the morning when I was trying to make coffee. THIS MEANS WAR.

And speaking of pests we also have ferrets.

I've read that this can even out though, ferrets used to be used for mouse hunting? I told our chunky guy, watson, that I read this on the internet, and told him to find and kill the mouse. He was looking me dead in the eye when I said this so I assume he got it.

Then he attacked a plastic bag.

Hopefully that's a warm up, but the ferrets are always attacking something so I could see this panning out. We can't set as many traps as we did years ago when we had a mouse, because the ferrets run around behind the fridge sometimes... we'll have to be very careful. I think there's a cabinet that mice liked before but we can child lock it so the ferrets can't get through the doors, if they're a tiny bit open they get into everything. They're very busy. They run around with intention, stealing what they can, like they're on a mission. I can't figure out what it is.

My dog's mission is to smell every tree for as long as caninely possible. The guinea pigs' mission was to eat all the lettuce, or hide from being eaten. My kids mission is to create all the tiny worlds out of legos, paper, play-dough, or pixels in fortnite.

my mission is to kill this damn mouse.

First, we misgendered the ferret. Probably because we got her off a craigslist post looking to rehome "male ferrets", and it wasn't that important anyway so we just shrugged off and assumed, but we took her to the vet who looked crazy at marc and asked "Why are you calling it a he? It's obviously a SHE! LOOK!" and held underside of the ferret up to him for examination. Maybe our vet thought that marc really cared about this issue and had spent hours looking at our ferret's junk before he made the wrong call. That was not the case.

So frankie is a she - good thing we like gender neutral names! our dog judy is female. we're not sure about the fish, but marc might be the only male in the house now.

On previous episodes, Josie my nine year old became obsessed with ferrets for something like a full year until we got her Frankie, and now she is even more obsessed with ferrets. What is it about this age? I remember being young and childless and running into a kid about that age at a party who told me all about football games, especially the superbowl. he practically gave me a play by play of the superbowl complete with "and then remember when so-and-so threw that pass to so-and-so and he ALMOST got a touchdown but they'd been at the 27 yard line and they only made it 25 yards!" It was that level of detail. What is with kids?

Josie is there now. She spent three days at her aunt's house, she's a pretty quiet kid but on walks with my sister she'd get chatty and tell her all about life, but mostly about ferrets. She can tell you their history, how they fit into the weasel family, genus, species, the endangered wild black-footed ferret and efforts towards its conservation. She's read most ferret books from the library because they're not that long.

meanwhile our own ferret continues to annoy me rule the house. we keep finding weird stashes of her stuff in places. I bagged up some bathroom trash, tied the plastic grocery bag knot and threw it down our stairs to take out when I got down there, then minutes later I hear it MOVING because frankie was out and wanted to drag the whole thing under the bed in the guestroom. why frankie, why?

days later josie said she was so happy to have an "exotic pet" and I told her that term seemed weird. "Exotic" things are supposed to make you feel privileged and luxurious, that is not how frankie makes me feel, but she smiled and said frankie DEFINITELY makes her feel wonderful and frankie just licked her face. frankie does not lick anybody else's face. she sneaks out and bites toes.

ferrets really do well with other ferrets so we're thinking about getting another one, but people want stupid "rehoming" fees of $100 plus because ferrets are $250 from petstores. The humane society wants $70, that seems like a better rate. I don't want to pay $100, especially if I find out the owners haven't taken their ferret to the vet EVER so I'm going to have to shell out more money in the immediate weeks. So I'm lowball offering the craigslist ads. No luck yet, and no new ones at the humane society, so frankie is alone.

we got a ferret. his name is frankie. He is very good at curling up and sleeping:



Josie got to be OBSESSED with ferrets last year... maybe more than last year? I can't remember. She'd draw ferrets, watch videos about them, check out books about them from the library.

All I knew was that they smelled funny and were kind of shaped like socks. I resisted this ferret idea for quite a while. but she kept at it, and I think marc was secretly into it too. he helped her make one of her ferret ideas into a screenprint to make t-shirts for a fundraiser. oh yes they did. she raised $60, which is what we'd told her an adoption fee runs for a ferret at the humane society. well once there was a community of people behind the idea it got harder to say no.

so I helped, I found a big cage on craigslist, found another family trying to rehome a ferret, and there you go, now we are a ferret family.

frankie has two modes... super bouncy, and sleeping. when he's running around being bouncy he looks like the back half and front half of his body don't really coordinate much. we block in the living room and just let him run, or josie carries him around the house. he's much easier to carry than a guinea pig. guinea pigs constantly want to jump to their death when you carry him. he is happier being carried, less interested in jumping off you, and significantly more likely to survive the fall unscathed if he does.

he spends the other times in his cage, folded in half sleeping. there's a litter box in there and he's pretty good about using it, and josie is pretty good about cleaning it.

I have lost track of whether our house smells like ferret. it probably does.

so our current pets: two molly fish both named juju, a pleco fish named mr. french fries, judy the dog, and frankie the ferret.

I can answer thefridayfive any day I want. This week it was questions about pets.

How many pets have you had at one time?
We had four guinea pigs and a dog. And a baby, if you count that! Unfortunately the lifespan of guinea pigs leaves something to be desired so we currently only have one guinea pig and our dog.

What is the strangest pet you have ever had?
When I was in high school my parakeets had a baby that I named Agamemnon because I thought he'd really need warrior strength to survive. He did! But during that baby phase... definitely looked like an alien.

What is the coolest trick you have ever taught a pet?
That's a struggle. I consider it a huge accomplishment that my dog kinda sits for treats and to get her leash on for walks, and she's not even so great at that. The guinea pigs give zero fucks about tricks. I even tried playing with a laser pointer in their cage once, they went over and sniffed the dot and declared "not food" and went back to their pigloos to nap.

Real animals: What animal have you always wanted as a pet?
Marc wants a hedgehog. I'm lukewarm on the idea.

Imaginary animals: Describe the ideal pet, an animal that doesn't really exist.
A dog that doesn't have to poop might actually be the ideal pet. I really like dogs. They love us, they're excited about just about anything.

Runner up to that would be a guinea pig that cares about people. One friend of mine said that herbivores know "we're not on the same side". Pugsly, our current guinea pig, is interested in our activities and kinda likes to be petted, but doesn't run out to see us, doesn't follow us around if left out like the dog does.

There's so many cute fuzzy animals that could use more dog tendencies, that's what I'm saying.

I was walking with marc and told him about Crackers I, my first parakeet, and I figured I'd write the story down here for posterity's sake. Actually, the story of all the parakeets... but it starts with Crackers I. I feel like I've written the story here before but I can't find it. I also felt like I'd told Marc the story before, but he said I hadn't. I'm not sure what's weirder... finding out there's a childhood story you haven't put in your livejournal after ten years, or finding out there's a childhood story you haven't told the man you've been with in six years. I keep thinking surely marc knows all my stories.

Anyway, I was five or six and remember going to the mall, and bird cages were on sale. Mom had had parakeets when she was a girl, she'd had one named Cookie. So she bought us a bird. Crackers!

We brought Crackers home and everything was good until the next morning. Crackers hadn't made it. He was on the bottom of the cage. Mom wasn't awake yet, I found him, I went to her room and said "Mom Crackers died!" She said, "He's asleep honey," and rolled over.

Anyway I was right, Crackers wasn't sleeping. Mom didn't want to return the whole cage to the pet store, just the bird, so she was there when the store opened, angry, with Crackers in a McDonald's happy meal box.

That day we brought home Crackers II! And he was a good bird, he lived for a long time, like eight or ten years. He got fat when he was old and couldn't fly but he'd just hang out on your finger. He was relaxed.

We got him a friend: Cookie. They got along great. Cookie was a female, we knew because she'd lay eggs sometimes, but the vet said parakeets don't normally breed in captivity unless you do all this nesting stuff so we weren't concerned.

When I was 13 or so, Crackers died. We were very sad.

We got Cupcake, a little blue parakeet, to keep Cookie company. Cookie and Cupcake did not get along.

When I was 15, One of Cookie's eggs hatched. That was weird. There was this tiny squeeky alien on the cage floor. The vet said it'd die. After a week, it hadn't died, so we got our hopes up and named it Agamemnon after the Greek warrior. The name worked. Agamemnon made it, albeit with a splayed leg problem from not being born in a nest with a stable place to put your feet. Agamemnon was my bird, born in my room, I loved her more than anything. I'd cup my hand near the ground and she'd crawl under there and go to sleep.

Cupcake came to an unfortunate end. Too much chasing Cookie around, I guess. She killed him. It was pretty bad. There was a lot of blood. She really did not like Cupcake.

Cookie died years later, when I was in college. We missed her a lot. Another bird buried in the back yard. She'd been sweet, and very smart.

We got a yellow bird we named Naboo, after Star Wars Episode I. It was a good name and we were hopeful but Naboo was sort of annoying. When I moved to Wichita, I took Naboo and Agamemnon with me but after a year or so I got sick of Naboo being so mean to Aggy. I let them fly around my apartment but Aggy was getting older, and weaker. I loved my Aggy so much and hated seeing her getting pushed off perches and generally tortured, so I put an ad out to rehome Naboo and a family came and took him.

Aggy and I were happy for a long time. I was single and loved having my own space. I'd come home from work and let her out, she'd hang out on the couch with me and share lettuce. Her legs got worse. I took her to a vet, but he said there wasn't much we could do for a parakeet. I set up her cage with soft bedding, gave her lots of fresh fruit, and we talked a lot. I remember once I lost my voice to laryngitis, and it made me realize how much I talked to the parakeet!

One morning I was headed off to work and Aggy was laying down at the bottom of the cage. I nudged her, he moved his head over and nibbled my finger and stood up. I said, "There's my bird!" Then I left. She was dead when I got him, late that night after working a full day and volunteering on a political campaign. That was March 25, 2005, and even though lots of birds came and went aggy was the one that really stuck with me and I still think about fondly sometimes. I think it's because she transitioned with me to Wichita, and we had that apartment, she was like my roommate when I was determined to be alone.

Anyway that was way more than I was going to write about the parakeets! Marc has had parakeets before too, sometimes we look at them at the petstore... Josie loves to look at them through the glass. Although now I've learned from the guinea pigs that every species of animal has a rescue of some sort, no reason to be buying anything from a petstore! It's also nice to look back on all this and think about how long we kept all these other healthy birds, despite that first one not doing so well.

I was fairly determined to make the best of the day, even though I was an emotional wreck all morning. I woke up and brushed my teeth and started crying. I pulled it together long enough to call my boss and tell him I'd be late, then I started crying. Being in the apartment was awful, because every little sound I heard made me think, "That's just aggy, shuffling around... she's okay! I'll go back to my room and she'll be there in her aquarium, not the box I put her in, and she'll climb up on the second rung of her ladder and tell me all about yesterday, because she didn't get to..."

But then I remembered that it really wasn't aggy. aggy was gone. and then I'd cry.

I researched pet cemeteries but decided that was impractical. Aggy was in my heart forever, she didn't need to be in a marked grave. So I took the box to a vet and asked if they could do something with my little parakeet and they said of course, they'd take care of it. Yeah, the box with all the writing.

Then I decided to go to work. I felt bad, because I'd told a guy in electrical I'd be there in the morning to help him rewire some switches first thing, and here I'd be rollling in at 10:00.

On the way I decided to stop at the UPS and pick up a package I'd ask them to hold. They didn't have it. The request hadn't made it through, so it was out on a truck somewhere. I thanked the lady at the desk and went outside... and then cried again. I cried in my car, driving down the highway.

Got to the office. Snuck in and washed my face. Upstairs, I was relieved to see that no one in my row was actually there, they were all off at meetings. I sat down, logged on, put my headphones on and prayed that no one would see me. Finally the guy who sits next to me got back, and asked what was up, and I just looked at him like nothing and said, "I'm changing the elevator trim actuator logic."

But thirty minutes later I felt like I should talk, so I told him about aggy, and he said he was sorry. Asked if we should have some group moment of silence, and I said no, so he told me a funny story about a hamster he'd had once. I told some more people... I felt better, which is good because engineers are pretty insensitive people. I know, I am one. They don't mean any harm, they just like to keep the mood light. And how.

Went out to lunch. Demonstrated display lighting curves to some folks who needed to know. hung up campaign signs after work. went to church for good friday service.

I still thought a lot about aggy; especially about yesterday morning when I last saw her alive. She looked bad. Sometimes she just had bad days... she's had them for a while. I've taken her to vets twice and they just say, "She's a ten year old bird with a splayed leg. It's wearing on her. There's not a whole lot we can do."

But yesterday she was worse. She wasn't in her little rock house, she was out by her food dish looking frustrated (most of you haven't owned parakeets, so you can't picture a frustrated or upset parakeet, but bird owners know, okay?). I asked if she was alright. I reached in and petted her and she tried to turn around and chew on me like she usually does when I'm screwing with her and she wants to say she loves me. I gave her fresh water and she climbed up and drank some and I said, "There you go, that's my aggy. You just gotta wake up!" I petted her again and then went to work. I thought about her during the day, but didn't get home until late, and when I got here I checked my e-mail and it wasn't for several minutes before I noticed how quiet everything was. I went in my room. She was dead. I said her name, told her to wake up, asked her to come back, and laid down and sobbed until my stomach hurt and I couldn't see out of my eyes anymore.

I'd known it was time. There was a time a few months ago when my parents came, and said "This bird is old. Let us know if... something sad happens." After that I was paranoid. I'd get home, rush to my room, and if aggy was asleep I'd wake her up, and if she was in her house I'd make her come out, because I wanted to know she was okay. After a while I relaxed, because she kept being okay. And this bird is special... her first death sentence came the day she hatched, by my family, and then the next day, from the vet. Ever since she was born in my room people have tried to tell me she was dying and I need to distance myself. But she never died. And I never distanced myself.

So now I'm here trying to figure out how to come back to this quiet apartment, where nobody's chirping along happily to Le Tigre, nobody's shuffling around before bedtime, nobody's waking up when the sun rises and calling to me to do the same. I can't replace aggy.

she's gone and I just have to keep going.