Ferrets!

She’s doing a lot better! She’s gaining weight slowly and is reliably eating a mix of pellets and raw food, and officially eating enough to be off the nutrient paste I had her on. She has so much more energy compared to a few weeks ago and has started getting up to mischief just as a ferret should, and is absolutely bugging the shit out of her new cagemate, Bandit. I have a vet appointment set for Wednesday so she can be checked out and vaccinated and get an official clean bill of health.

I got this poor girl from a friend of a friend of a friend who obviously had no fucking clue what they were doing. She’s supposedly two years old and about half the size she should be. Her fur is thin, patchy, and greasy, her skin is pink and irritated, she’s malnourished and severely under weight, and she’s covered in flea dust (though I haven’t seen any live fleas, and she was treated with advantage II immediately). The cage she came in was way too small for a ferret and full of foam and rubber “toys”, including a flip flop and a croc???? She got almost zero time out of her cage, the cheapest cat food, no companionship, and way too many baths.

The first thing they told me when they dropped her off? “You’ll probably want to give her another bath. She stinks.”

Which baffled me because she doesn’t smell any different than a normal ferret, if a bit stronger because of the ridiculously frequent baths she’s gotten.

This is my first time owning a ferret, and it happened pretty abruptly, but even with the minimal research I was able to do before I got her and what I’ve done since I can tell pretty easily that everything in her life so far has been incorrect, neglectful, and borderline abusive.

If you’re going to get a pet- any kind of pet -do your fucking research. You’ll not only learn what an animal needs to thrive, but whether or not you’ll be able to give them what they need to do so. When you commit to owning a pet, their entire life is in your hands and you should do nothing but the absolute best for them.

This poor ferret barely has the energy to play around like she should be, hasn’t eaten much even though she’s so thin, and is almost desperate in how she climbs into my arms and melts because she’s so starved for attention and interaction. It’s going to take months upon months, and probably a trip or two to the vet, to get her even close to where she should be health-wise. All because her previous owner had no clue what they were doing.