ferrets

Yesterday I talked about how more people are surrendering ferrets and fewer are adopting and how hard it is on people who have to move in with friends or relatives who won’t allow them to bring their ferrets.

But it’s hard on the ferrets, too. Ferrets are intelligent creatures – experts say they’re as smart as a 2-year-old child or a chimpanzee. Being uprooting and dumped into a shelter … no matter how nice a shelter it is … is very, very hard on them. Ferrets love their owners. They think of them as mom and dad. To have “mom” take you somewhere and drop you off, never to come back, is hard on them. The older the ferret, the worse it is.

There have been many cases of ferrets dying shortly after being surrendered. Many go into a depression and get sick or stop eating. Some can’t be saved.

It breaks my heart when I lose a ferret because it’s grieving over losing its previous owner. I can see the pain and loss in the ferret’s eyes. I don’t care what current religions say … I know ferrets are intelligent, have feelings, and do have souls. If you look, you can see it in their eyes.

We do our best to engage the ferret and try to give them a reason to live. Sometimes it’s pretty hard. The older the ferret, the harder it is to convince them that life is still worth living. They’ve lost their “mother” who brought them home from the store, loved them, played with them and fed them. They’ve lost the only home they’ve ever known and have been launched into a world of strange smells, sights and sounds. But worse of all is when people separate bonded sets of ferrets.

Tomorrow: More about bonded sets

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