A Very Special Anniversary

Exactly seven years ago today I went to a local pet supply shop to buy ferret litter. They had run out. This presented a problem. I had learned that if I changed my ferrets' litter they magically forgot their litter training. After all, they couldn't be meant to poop in that wonderful new dig box I had given them in place of a litter pan, could they? I mean it probably looked and smelled like their litter pan but the stuff inside was different and fun to play with. They'd relieve themselves somewhere else, like on a corner of the carpet. Can't mess up the fun new toy, can we?

Needless to say with six young, playful ferrets at home I absolutely, positively had to have something that the ferrets knew was litter. I went to another area pet store that I normally didn't frequent -- one that sold ferret kits. By then I knew that we had a ferret shelter in North Carolina that was full and I preferred to support stores that didn't sell animals.

Anyway, I went in and there was this absolutely tiny ferret kit, smaller than any I had ever seen. She was crying and wouldn't stop. I had never heard a ferret cry before. I asked the help in the store, all high school kids, if I could pick her up. After a "yes" I had a crying, biting tiny ferret in my arms. To quote from Romana's web page:
...it soon became obvious why she was upset. They were feeding her solid food and she only had her milk teeth! She was starving to death with a full food bowl. It was the weekend, the managers weren't there, and the help had no idea what to do and didn't seem too keen on listening to me. I was afraid she'd die if I left her there, so I took her home, resolving to talk to the store owner during the week.
...
Prior to that time the store had only sold Marshall Farms kits and had cared for them very well indeed. None had ever arrived at less than seven weeks old. Romana came from a different breeder and was the youngest they ever had. They took care of her like they do all of their ferrets but that simply couldn't possibly work for a five week old. My housemate and I fed Romana soft food and she literally spent two days with her head in her food bowl, even falling asleep with her head laid there. As our vet at the time (now retired) said about Romana: "All she needed was groceries." The right groceries, mind you. Yes, the manager of the store was good and offered me my money back if I wanted to return Romana but by then we had fallen in love with her and had decided to keep her. The picture on the left is Romana, by then at a healthy body weight for her size, at age nine weeks.

This next picture is of Romana, a thirteen week old kit, climbing our screen door. We quickly put a stop to that.

Romana today is a happy, healthy, exceptionally affectionate seven year old ferret. She's still tiny. I don't know if that is because of her being starved at such a critical point in her development or if it was because she was the runt of the litter. That hasn't ever stopped her from climbing everything and anything (as you can see) or from jumping farther than ferrets three times her size.

Romana is one of the last two surviving ferrets from the eight we brought home in 1998. (Nyssa is the other.) She is the reason Halloween will always be special to me. The final picture below was taken earlier this year here in Cincinnati. Happy Anniversary, Romana!