Lucy is now six and a half years old. She’s certainly showing the signs of ferret old age, but with the help of regular steroid injections she has quite a good quality of life.

We had to have Same Same put to sleep yesterday morning. He was diagnosed with lymphoma in May 2009 and was only expected to live a few months. However, he did extremely well on prednisone for far longer than that. At the end of November last year he could still get himself upstairs with no assistance, even though he’d lost a lot of weight and was swollen with fluid by then. He continued to deteriorate slowly but as late as Sunday (13th) night he was moving around, eating and drinking. On Monday morning I found him lying completely flat in his cage unable to move, his swelling was noticeably bigger than the night before and he felt cold to the touch. We took him to the vet who said he had fluid or cancer growth in his lungs that was preventing him from breathing properly and advised us to have him put to sleep straight away to end his suffering.

When the ferrets were young I used to complain about the smell, the biting and the time they took to look after. They are not easy pets. But they found their way into my heart and we had so much fun. We’ve still got Lucy but now that both Same Same and Different are gone, the house feels empty. I’ll miss Same especially because he was very cuddly and used to give Mr W and I little ferret kisses. This behaviour earned him the nicknames ‘Mr Kissy’ and ‘Dr Love’. However, he could be relied upon to bite absolutely everyone else, commonly hard enough to draw blood and leave a scar.

This is Same last October. He used to go upstairs to sleep in a spare duvet I’d left on the carpet with the intention of donating it to my parents.

Our ferret Different was put to sleep yesterday afternoon. He passed away very peacefully at Village Vet in Milton.

Different came to us with his brother Same Same in August 2004. We had just returned from a trip to Thailand where the phrase ‘Same same but different’ is used to mean ‘similar’. Since they looked similar to us, we named them after this phrase.

Mark had wanted ferrets for a long time but had had trouble finding some. The dreyman at Mark’s parents pub managed to get hold of these two boys and I went to pick them up from the pub to bring them back to Cambridge. They came with half a can of Pedigree Chum dog food. I had no idea what to expect of ferrets but dutifully loaded them into the car in a catbox supplied by Mandy and brought them home.

I didn’t like the ferrets at first. They smelled bad and had no idea where to poo. We found that they pooed through the corners of the hastily bought hamster cage – their first home. So Mark obtained a tray and filled it with litter for them and left that in their cage overnight. But when we came downstairs the next morning we found them both asleep in it side by side.

Eventually we bought them a deluxe multi level ferret cage and they learned how to use a litter tray. They also learned not to bite, well, they refrained from biting Mark and I but not anyone else. Our housemate Adam seemed to be completely dominated by the boys and suffered many attacks. Different in particular was very defiant as a young kit and would not respond to scruffing, in fact, it made him bite even more.

Over the years Different has brought many happy times to the household. He made us laugh because was very particular about certain things, including a red rubber toy, which he never played with but absolutely insisted that it was stashed in a safe place. He hated the vacuum cleaner and would panic and hide as soon as it was taken out of the cupboard. He loved to dig and was the main perpetrator in destroying three different sofas. He loved potato peel and would often beg for it when we prepared potatoes in the kitchen.

Here are photos of some of the many happy times we’ve had with him:
Santa Different
Begging
Eating cream
Snuggling with my bro
Weird sleeping position
Inside the sofa
In a box with my bro. Heaven.

In early January this year we found a large lump on Different’s leg. The vet said it was an abscess and it was removed but then they found a tumour behind it. We elected to have it surgically removed and the material tested. The result was that it was a malignant type of cancer which would usually be removed with a margin, which wasn’t really possible due to the size of the tumour compared with the size of Different.

After the removal of the tumour, there were some problems with liquid collecting in the site but after that had settled down, Different had a few weeks of being almost back to normal. But the tumour did come back and although he was very determined to continue as normal, when he couldn’t walk at all and the tumour had got so big that the skin on his leg was breaking we decided that his quality of life was too low. The house feels empty without him, but he’s not uncomfortable anymore and that’s what’s most important.

RIP Different.

Same’s blood test was inconclusive. So they can’t confirm it’s cancer, but they can’t confirm it’s not either. It’s still reasonably likely that it’s cancer, and he’s definitely seriously ill whatever it is, so we’ll just carry on with the steroids for now.

Same came back from having tests at the vet today. They think he has cancer of the lymphatic system and that there isn’t much that can be done about it. They expect that he only has a few months left. Of course, one of the first things you think is ‘Did I miss something?’ but it’s been described as an insidious disease, with symptoms only appearing when the cancer is very advanced. Indeed, in a matter of literally days, he’s gone from acting completely normally to doing virtually nothing. We’ve had to carry him around because he’s too weak to walk and we’ve had to feed him and place him in the litter tray. But, bless him, he still ‘kisses’ us and he hasn’t bitten us, even though this would be normal behaviour for a ferret in pain.

Mark is very upset. So am I but I am trying to be practical and think positively. I think Same has had a good life so far and I’m going to make sure he is comfortable for the rest of it. So tonight I hand-fed him organic roast chicken and he munched it hungrily. I’ll have to think of something nice for him to have tomorrow…