We named him Fox in Socks, because he had little brown feet, much darker than the rest of him. Your first ferret, I always tell people at the shelter, is your gateway ferret. That’s the ferret that convinces you a) ferrets are awesome and b) if one ferret is awesome, ten ferrets would be TEN TIMES THE AWESOME. Next thing you know, you’re calling up Rudy Giuliani on the radio.Your first ferret, that’s how they hook you.
Shortly after I took Friday’s pic of him triumphantly conquering the dining room table, Mr. A and I noticed Fox was looking a little tuckered out. Since he had a tumor removed a month and a half ago, his adrenal disease really kicked into high gear, and he promptly lost all his tail fur. He looked like a tiny, skinny possum, but because he was eating and drinking and running around playing, and taking his medication from the vet, we weren’t too worried. But we had been feeding him mashed-up food anyway, fatten him up a bit. He ate pretty well for a while, but yesterday he got kind of a thousand-yard stare going, and after spending an hour on Mr. A’s lap and another few minutes on mine, and some time snuggled up with his brother, he walked a little ways out onto the floor in their room, curled up in a little ball, and just … left.
I suspect the cancer finally got him, or it could have been simply age. Either way, though I am righteously pissed that we seem to be losing all our pets at once, he died here where he had everything he loved around him, and for that, as well as for many other things, I’m grateful to him. He taught us that ferrets are awesome, that no matter how badly our days were going he still wanted his treats, and most of the really incredible laughs I’ve had over the past six and a half years were due to his antics.
We will likely try to find a new ferret soon, because we don’t want Stripe to get too freaked. I don’t put a lot of stock in ideas of the afterlife, but I hope if there is one, Fox and Joe have found each other and Fox has resumed trying to convince Joe once and for all that despite the 3-pound weight disparity, Fox is indeed the alpha male.
Fox was a good pet. He was good to us, and he’ll be missed.
A.