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Pandora was the queen of our busyness. She was the first ferret to join our family; actually, she was the first pet to join our home. We adopted Pandora on Labor Day weekend, just a couple of months after Julie and I were married in 1999, so she was with us just shy of a full eight years.

Needless to say, as an ambassador to her species she was successful. I’ve heard it said that one will either love ferrets or they will hate them. Once Pandora joined our family, it wasn’t long before we adopted four more—much to her chagrin. Every other ferret that I’ve ever met loves to be completely social and would be very lonely as an only pet. Pandora, however, was often quite aloof with the other ferrets, and frequently hissed her displeasure at their rowdiness. She seemed to prefer to spend time alone with her humans.

Pandora was never too tired or excited to give kisses. In fact, she could lick your nose for as long as you were willing to hold her up to your face. More often than not, it was your nose that fatigued before her tongue.

She started out as a gorgeous dark sable point and continued to roan over her long life. By the end, she was looking very much like the mythical dark-eyed white.

She loved just being with her humans and we couldn’t have asked for a better companion. Of all our ferrets, Pandora was the only one who made you earn her respect. Industrious, stubborn and regal; she taught me that if you can’t beat them—you still don’t have to join them. The Queen is dead; I do not think there will be another. God bless you, Pandora.

Freyja had a good third week with us. She had a vaccination last weekend and already weighed 16 pounds, so she is growing by leaps and bounds. She is definitely taller than she used to be, and can’t fit under the sofa anymore, though she is still running behind it.

Freyja’s fear period is pretty well behind her now: Though it still takes some coaxing to get her going on a walk, she does great after a block or two, and absolutely adores meeting new people (she is much more cautious with meeting new dogs). She’s visited both Bush Park and Willamette University now, and did just great on both occasions. This dog is still incredibly people-oriented. When we’re out and she sees someone in the distance, she sits down and watches until they go out of sight. If they walk right by us, she flings herself in their path by way of introduction—all wagging tail, wiggling body, licking tongue, happy whine—in an ecstacy of greeting. She hasn’t learned yet that not everyone wants to love her up, and is incredibly disappointed when we keep her from bounding over to someone who doesn’t seem interested in saying hello.

Freyja is still all mouth, and we’re working hard on the chewing issue, mostly meaning we have to watch her like a hawk to make sure she doesn’t chew on something she shouldn’t. We distract her with toys, but her attention span is only a minute or two, and then she’s off to eat something else, anything else, up to and including the fireplace bricks (don’t ask me, I don’t get it either). So that’s a work in progress. As you can see from the pictures, she also likes chewing on us. Poor Jeremy’s hands are covered with scratches because he’s her favorite, and we have to be careful what clothes we wear when we’re playing with her, because she likes catching us by grabbing our knees, and that leads to a lot of ripped fabric. Maybe she’s actually sharpening those little fangs on the fireplace!

Puppy-ferret relations continue. There have been no major incidents, though Ajax is not shy about grabbing Freyja’s paw or nose if she crowds in on his personal space. Jaxie’s main strategy, however, is to play “Snapping Turtle” in the mathom, as in the photo above; or, as Freyja calls that game, “Whack-a-Mole.”

Freyja continues to score well on the new toy front. We got her several more toys of different sorts last weekend, and are rotating through them so she doesn’t get bored. Ajax is also fond of many of her toys, so we’re constantly recovering dog toys from behind the sofa. I think her favorite new toy, though, is just a fresh ice cube. We offered her one after a walk on a warm day, and she absolutely loves crunching on them and pushing them all around the room.

After we had a few successful interactions between Niki and Freyja, we decided to introduce her to Ajax. Now, Jaxie has shown that he is not a friend to cats, and since he also antagonizes Pandora, we were a little more cautious when it came to him. We first did it when Freyja was a little sleepy, hoping that lower energy would give her less of the appearance of a threat to Ajax. That backfired a bit; she came over to sniff him, and he promptly bit her right between the eyes. No damage, just a bit of a scare for the pup.

Next, we got the boy out when Freyja was ready to play. That went much better, because Ajax was too busy running from hiding place to hiding place to even think about grabbing the pup.

Freyja and Jaxie have now had several playdates, and they maintain a tentative detente. Freyja is more than happy to jump on Ajax and smush him with her paws, and he in turn keeps trying to grab her paws and nose whenever she holds still long enough. But at least she isn’t intimidated by him now, and we’re holding onto the belief that he will quit trying to bully her by the time she grows up to be 15 times his size.

Freyja has also been introduced to Pandora now. We first got Panda out when Freyja was conked out at the end of the night, since Pandora is a bit of a jumpy girl in her old age, and we didn’t want an active pup scaring the living daylights out of her. Panda very bravely sniffed all the way around the sleeping dog, and when she started feeling comfortable enough to climb up on her haunches for an even closer look, Freyja moved, and Panda decided to call it a night.

The next time Panda asked to come out, Freyja was wide awake, however, so we got Niki out also, as a distraction. Pandora actually did very well, and was incredibly patient with the puppy jumping on her and trying to get her to play. We’ll have to watch Freyja to make sure she doesn’t get overly excited with Panda, but it was another relatively successful encounter, so our hopes are high that they’ll all be playing together nicely before long.

We’ve been eager to find out how Freyja’s interactions with the ferrets would go. The fuzzies have met dogs before, so we anticipated a good response on their part, but we were unsure of how rough the puppy might want to play with them.

We started off introducing Freyja to Nikita, who is pretty easy-going and playful, and just let them sniff each other. That went pretty well, so the next day, we decided to let Niki out to run around for a bit.

Freyja, as might be imagined, was fascinated. She followed Niki everywhere, approaching slowly at first, then playfully pouncing. Niki is so small and quick that she easily outpaced the puppy and ran from one hiding spot to the next, but didn’t seem too frightened or otherwise put off; and Freyja, for her part, was clearly just playing, using only her paws and not her mouth.

Niki was especially interested in the puppy’s water bowl, and returned to it several times to take drinks. Before I got the camera out, the two of them actually drank at the same time, which seems a bit like a promise for peaceful cohabitation. Of course, right afterwards, they were off racing around the room again.

This weekend, Jeremy and I rented a car to do errands, take the ferrets up to the vet, and generally get out of Salem. The rental agency gave us a PT Cruiser, a car we had both been a bit enamored of, but after riding around in it for two and a half days, I think we’ve lost some interest in it as a potential purchase. Not that it was a bad car by any means, but it just didn’t have the same farfegnugen as our cute little Jetta.

In any event, the main purpose of the rental was to get the ferrets up to their vet in Lake Oswego for vaccines and annual exams. (In case you’re wondering why we chose a vet that is 40 miles away from us, let’s just say that experienced ferret vets don’t grow on trees.) We got everyone in the carriers and up to the office without incident—I think, but more on that. Niki got a clean bill of health. Ajax’s occasional wheezing and snorting was determined to be a minor upper respiratory sort of apnea caused by the fact that he’s a big boy with a big ol’ neck, so nothing to be concerned about unless he actually starts having trouble breathing. His very dirty back teeth were determined to be a good candidate for scaling, which could be done without anaesthesia and made a vast improvement in just a few minutes.

Pandora, as might be expected of an older ferret, had a few more issues. The primary one dealt with was the fact that she lost her top left fang sometime in the past few days without our noticing. We’ve been racking our brains trying to figure out when it might have happened, and we think the most likely scenario was after we bathed them all on Thursday night: we were also washing all their towels, so all three were out at once, and Ajax grabbed Pandora hard at one point. When we pulled them apart, she was biting his scruff just as much as he was biting hers, and his skin is thick enough to bend vaccination needles, so it’s possible she snapped the tooth off then. At any rate, the fang broke off right at the gumline, which is a recipe for abcess. Fortunately, our vet agreed to stay after hours to do dental surgery and got the rest of the tooth out. Pandora will be on antibiotics for the next week or so, and we have a medicated wash to keep the sutured hole in her mouth good and clean. She’s putting up with the meds beautifully so far, and feels well enough to roll and carry her jingly balls all around the house like always, so she should be just fine. I only wish we knew for sure when she broke that tooth; it really caught us by surprise.

Other than that rather eventful vet visit, we ran lots and lots of shopping errands with the car this weekend. Since I ordered a bunch of clothes last month for my birthday, this month we caught Jeremy up with a trip to Washington Square for some spiffy new duds (and possibly one more dud for me). While there, we also had great fun exploring the new stores that were built since the last time we got up there (several years ago, admittedly), including a Teavana, where we purchased three new kinds of loose leaf tea to try out. We’ve sampled all three by now, of course, and are very happy with our choices of a traditional Moroccan mint, a slightly nutty Darjeeling called Margaret’s Hope, and a green blend called Japanese Cherry Blossom. Plus, it was just really nice to be able to sniff all the different types before choosing. We should really get out more.
We ran around Bridgeport Village on Saturday while the ferrets were otherwise occupied at the vet, and went a little wild in Whole Foods, as we have been really missing having decent grocery options sans car. Would it be silly of me to outline some of our prizes? It may totally expose us Salemites as country bumpkins, but I’m too excited not to. We got a beautiful hunk of Parmagiano-Reggiano cheese and some ricotta salata, which I keep reading about but could never find; some sherry vinegar, salt-packed anchovies, and Italian tuna in olive oil; dried porcinis for half the price they were going for at Safeway; some Cyprus black lava salt with gorgeous pyramidal crystals that I have no idea how to use; a chunk of Scharffenberger bittersweet chocolate, some cacao nibs, and way too many Endangered Species bars; a sugar pie pumpkin; and tons more stuff that is going to be a lot of fun to play with.

On Sunday, we ran errands around town, mostly to Lowe’s for supplies so Jeremy can make a still-life box (I’m sure he’ll tell you more about that as he starts building it), but I also got some buttons and grosgrain ribbon to finish off my tweedy cardigan, and we did more grocery shopping for the perishable sorts of foods that we didn’t want to lug all the way down from Lake Oswego.

So that was our rather extravagant, car-powered weekend. Did I mention that while we were doing all this, it was pouring rain almost non-stop, and hasn’t let up yet? This is soaking rain, not your typical Oregon drizzle-mist. Perfect weather to ditch the rental car and curl up inside with a hot cup of Moroccan mint tea and a new sock on the needles while dinner finishes braising. (And by the way, if you like pork chops at all, you owe it to yourself to run straight into the kitchen and make Marcella Hazan’s Pork Chops with Tomatoes, Cream, Porcini from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. I left out the button mushrooms and just added the porcini soaking liquid with the drained tomatoes, and they were maybe the best pork chops ever. Marcella’s the best!)

Rocky was our little ambassador, a model representative for his kind. He never played too roughly and didn’t have it in him to bite. He had a congenital eye defect that diminished his sight somewhat, but it only made him more endearing: he tried to greet everyone with a polite sniff on the mouth, sort of his way of saying hello.

He had an adventuresome streak and was known to leap without looking, usually with amazing dexterity. Once, however, he managed to get himself wedged by the neck between a desk and the wall, three feet up, and had to be rescued before choking himself to death.

He was the only ferret of our busyness that everyone, humans and ferrets alike, found congenial. He was always curious to know what his humans were eating but would never partake himself. He had unusually long legs and large soft paws. When he galloped in pursuit of one of his sisters, he looked for all the world like a bounding Pepe LePew. He loved cardboard and leather, often attempting to stash entire boxes or steal the belt from off your waist.

Rocky was a cancer survivor and had major surgery to remove a tumor on his right adrenal gland two years ago. This winter he developed a second major internal cancer on his pancreas and remained on medication (preferably malt-flavored, not bubble-gum) until the end. God bless you, Rocky, you are missed.

Loki passed away this afternoon. She was an excellent ferret and constant friend. Despite her namesake, she was never much of any trouble — unless you count the times she would abscond with a ball of yarn. She loved to roll on plastic lids and play in tubes. She broke one of her canines in an unfortunate bathtub accident and had to have it capped, which earned her the moniker, Snaggle-tooth.

She was the cheerful Omega of our busyness, a position that she never relinquished, though three came after her. She was as quick to play with her humans as she was with her siblings, sometimes even more so. She enjoyed moving to one’s flank and pouncing on an exposed ankle, though she never did more than grab on with her paws.

Godspeed Little Loki, you will be missed.

Well, spring break is over already, and Jeremy is winging his way back to NYC as I write. I took several days off to hang out with him, and even though we didn’t do much worth mentioning, it was a lovely week.

I have a brief update about little Loki: we took her to the vet this past Tuesday for another check-up, and the medicine does seem to be helping her to some extent, though not enough to send the cancer into remission. She’s lost another two ounces in the past few weeks. Not much else we can do at this point, though, but keep up the meds and give her lots of love and attention. She loves to curl up next to us in the blanket on the couch, and has taken to begging for chicken gravy every time we go in the kitchen.

Over the past few months, I’ve been watching with concern as Loki, our second-oldest girl, has lost weight and energy. Finally I was able to take her to a vet for examination, and have some bad news for those of you that know Loki: she has been diagnosed with lymphosarcoma (lymphoma). This is basically a cancer originating in the white blood cells that can cause tumors in various places in the body; in Loki’s case, there are several of a highly malignant variety in her bowels.

At the moment I don’t know much about what her quality or length of life will be. She has been prescribed prednisone, and I will be giving that to her twice a day, possibly for the rest of her life. With luck, it will arrest the progress of the cancer and help her become more healthy and comfortable, though it is not a cure.

Loki is 5 1/2 years old now, and, being a Marshall Farms ferret, we knew there was a strong possibility of disease coming her way around this age, whether adrenal, insulinoma, lymphoma, or something else. Even knowing all this, the news was still difficult to take. You better believe Loki is getting all the attention, love, and treats she can stand.

P.S. The photo was taken last night, while Loki slept in her new favorite spot: the blanket I always have on the couch (my first large knitting project, for what it’s worth). I let her out to run around, and after about 10 minutes, she climbs up on the couch—sometimes with my assistance—and curls up in her blanky.

(I apologize for the delay in the final Ferret of the Week post; I was at Portland State University all day Friday for a book repair workshop.)

I think by this time we have about run the gamut of ferret opinions on treats and toys. Ajax loves treats, though like Niki, he has never been given many things like raisins. He enjoys ferret treats and human food as well: he likes licking empty ice cream bowls and yogurt cups, and getting pieces of fruit and chicken. Like the others, he gets a kick out of drinking from our glasses even if (or perhaps, because) it means knocking them over, but his favorite beverage to steal is iced tea.

Ajax will play with anything—paper bags, plastic bags, pillows, towels, tunnels he can’t actually fit in, old socks, new socks, socks with feet in them, squeaky stuffed socks rabbits, other ferrets—as long as it doesn’t give too much of a chase. He is such a big boy that he tires rather quickly (for a ferret) and pancakes out on the floor for a breather if he has to run or war-dance for more than a few minutes at a time. The other type of toy he likes a lot are large hard balls: he has several favorites, including a small grey plastic “boulder,” a sturdy ping-pong ball with a weight inside, and a Chinese meditation ball. He pushes them around with his nose, then picks them up with his paws and rolls over on his back, trying to get a good grip with his teeth, an amusing impossibility.

Well, this post concludes our Ferret of the Week series, as we have run out of new ferrets to introduce. Our ferrets bring us a great deal of joy, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the stories and photos. Now I just have to come up with something else to write about…