(Sometimes you're too busy with your life to write about it, that's why it was a long time since the last entry)

Carmen's story

In February, I brought Rustan and Carmen to a ferret meeting in Stockholm. Everything went well until Carmen met one of her cousins (often you recognize them by the family look), who looks almost the same, only smaller. This cousin said "Yip!" to Carmen, whereupon poor Carmen "went a little funny in the head" and wanted to start a fight with everyone.

Well, so far so good, that could always be taken care of by not bringing her to more meetings, even though she always wants to go.

At home, everything was just fine until she went to sleep. Apparently she had a nightmare, for in the middle of the night she woke up and and went over to my ear (where I probably still smelled of strange ferrets) and bit my earlobe.

It didn't hurt very much, in spite of one set of canines going all the way through it -- but she didn't want to let go! I tried telling her nice to let go, I tried forcefully to tell her, all to no avail. (And I didn't have a small piece of metal, like a spoon handle or key, handy to put into her mouth -- that tastes bad to them so they let go.)

So... I had to force her jaws open, which wasn't easy at all, especially since one canine had sort of got stuck in the ear and she seemed intent to bite more. But in the end I managed.

In the morning I had a unwelcome surprise: During the night Carmen had lost some fur at the base of her tail. Probably stress induced, I reasoned, but it got worse the following days, and then a couple of weeks later I felt a small scab under the skin on the side of her thigh. That's when we went to the vet.

Nobody was really certain what it was she had, so we took as many blood samples as we could -- which wasn't all we'd wanted, but after shaving both fore legs and trying several times we just had to face it: She didn't want to part with too much blood. None of the samples showed anything worrysome, so next stage was skin scrape sample under the microscope. Finally, one of the staff found something which could be a small mite, so Carmen got an Ivomec injection. The noxious shampoo we were suggested I rejected ("Not to be used on cats!" "Must wear protective gloves!"). Besides, she hadn't ever scratched herself much, so I wasn't that sure about the mite theory.

A miserable sight she was, shaved on both forelegs and a wide patch shaved on her rear, only a little fur on the tail. But at least nominally healthy.

One week later she got the second injection, and by that time the fur had started to grow back. She's still not really beautiful, but at least she hasn't any strange patches anymore.