So Matilda decided to make her entrance into the family dramatic. Last Saturday Mr. A and I came home from a day out to find her curled up and refusing to eat. She yacked up everything I tried spooning into her, was getting dehydrated and wouldn’t play. When a baby ferret doesn’t want to play, it is time to sound the nucelar sirens because something is Very Wrong.
I called our long-suffering shelter director, picked up some stomach medication and shelter food (figuring that what she’d been eating before might have been easier on her system) and spent the next two days giving her this unbelievably disgusting gushy mush every two hours, bit by bit. She would only eat a bite or two at a time, and only from my fingers. When I went to bed, Mr. A took over, coaxing her to drink from a water dish and checking on her to make sure she was still breathing.
Monday she was a little perkier, and then yesterday when I got home from the shelter she was flopped on the cage floor, head down in the food dish, noshing away. The more she eats, the more she plays, the hungrier she gets. I’m not ordinarily such a ball of nerves about the pets; when the boys get sick it’s like eh, they’ll eat when they’re hungry again. But Miss Teeny Tiny Featherweight Pet has so little meat on her to begin with, the loss of even a gram or two is worrisome:
It’s likely she was just stressed out from moving around so much (her owner to animal control to the shelter to us in the space of five days) and pigged out too much on new food in her starved state. The others have been incredibly gentle with her. Even Bucky has done nothing to her but curl up beside her to keep her warm. I don’t think we’re entirely out of the woods yet, but she’s slowly putting the pudge back on, and in a couple of weeks I hope to see her filled out and full of energy.
A.