Last Saturday: Playtime For 14

From last Friday through Monday of this week I was down in North Carolina and so were the ferrets. One of the highlights was a visit to my friend Cindy in Clayton. Cindy currently has nine ferrets of her own, two of which are recent rescues. Her ferrets and mine have gotten together before and it always works out well. Playtime for 14 ferrets was just plain wild as always. For Ella and Zephyr this was the first time.

Zephy was in absolute ferret heaven. She was the only ferret of the entire two businesses to run and play the entire three hour plus time we had. Cindy has a rice box and a biodegradable, non-toxic peanut box for digging, both connected by an intricate tunnel system. Zephyr thought this was the absolute best. Any ferret who came over to wrestle was happily obliged. It didn't matter if Zephy won or lost the match. Play was the order of the day.

Ella didn't take quite as much advantage and was more interested in exploring and, after maybe an hour, finding a really plush cloth tube to take a nap in. She came back out to explore again towards the end.

I learned quite a bit about Chin Soon during the three hours. She'd run into most of these ferrets before at a TriFL meeting and didn't like it one bit. That was back when she was scared of every other ferret except Podo. Since then she's really bonded to my other four, loves to wrestle and play, and even became super close to Nyssa, her one time nemesis. I thought that she'd be fine with Cindy's ferrets too. Silly me.

Chin Soon is still terrified of any other ferrets she doesn't know. If one of Cindy's approached her she just ran, ending up back in her travel cage. At one point she and Romana were in there and Tux, one of Cindy's newcomers, decided to explore the cage and then wrestle with Romana. Tux wrestling with Romana terrified Chin Soon, who screamed and pooped on the spot. The poor little scared weasel wasn't even touched. I picked her up, comforted her for a while, and put her in the dig box with Zephyr. Seeing Zephry and only Zephyr was there she relaxed and started playing like a happy ferret again. Once a lot of Cindy's ferrets decided it was nap time Chin Soon also was able to explore and climb to her heart's content.

Nyssa has met several of Cindy's ferrets on many previous occasions, but mostly where I used to live in North Carolina or at TriFL meetings. Cindy's house is a place she hadn't seen in years. She was stimulated by the new surroundings and was more active than I'd seen her in a long time, exploring every possible nook, cranny, corner, and toy. She even ran through Cindy's ferrets' tunnels. The only bad news was that to the other ferrets Nyssa probably seemed like any other active, normal ferret at that point. One of Cindy's more aggressive boys, Little Man, decided to wrestle with Nyssa. Nyssa is still our dominant alpha and is still a fierce wrestler. It didn't take her long to send Little Man running. As has always been the case in recent months a good wrestle takes all the energy Nyssa has. Within two or three minutes exploring was over and the hammock in the travel cage was where she chose to sleep. Still, I think Nyssa enjoyed her new surroundings and definitely got more exercise than I'd seen in a while, which is all good.

Romana has always been a great explorer and Cindy's house gave her great new opportunities to go back to something she seemed to do endlessly years ago as a kit: climb everything and anything. Romana still loves to climb and I had to warn Cindy a few times about the interesting places Romana was getting to in order to make sure that Cindy was OK with it. In a couple of cases we moved breakable things but I only had to remove Romana once. Romana the intrepid explorer was definitely back. She eventually found Nyssa and curled up with her but not before a nice, long run.

Cindy's newcomers, Tuxedo (Tux for short) and Pinafore (Penny for short) are wonderful, beautiful, relatively young ferrets. Cindy was concerned about integrating them but it didn't take long at all. By the end of playtime Tux was sleeping curled up with Slithor, Cindy's old man of maybe nine years. Penny was in a hammock in the big cage with five other ferrets. I think they'll get along just fine. Oh, and yes, they played and ran and wrestled.

Speaking of Slithor, both he and Mosaic (Cindy's other old man) were absolute sweethearts and gave me lots of kisses. I remember when Slithor, whose original name was Nascar, was surrendered at the very first TriFL visit to Ronald McDonald House in Durham. That had to be at least seven years ago, probably more. It's great to see these old ferrets still doing well in a great, loving home. I'll never understand people who think an intelligent, loving pet is somehow disposable. Thank G-d for people like Cindy who take them in and give them forever homes.

All in all I think Saturday was a great time for everyone.