An Unfenced Existence

RIP Feisty McBitey.

After much agonizing (and being dicked around *again* by the ferret shelter), I am now the proud owner of two beautiful little disease weasels - Farragut North and Robin Hood. I brought them home and set them up in a pen in the library and they played a bit while Vincent sniffed around the outside. After a few minutes I put him in the pen with the others and they played and played. Vincent was very gentle despite the fact that Robin managed to pin him twice with no major repercussions. They even ate together with absolutely no issues (Vincent enjoying the soft food while the babies attacked the hard food). Barring a vet visit, I soon hope to have them all sleeping together.

As for my allergies, I have a plan - which mostly consists of looking into the possibility of allergy shots (which my insurance now covers) for the ferrets. I am very pleased with my two new little guys

One final update on the Baby drama -

We're pretty sure that Baby is as recovered as he is ever going to be. I still have to give him some medications (for ulcers) but other than that he is off all of the stuff he really hated. Nor will it be forever, thank God.

He's definitely brain damaged, though not to the extent that I thought he would be. He can walk (a little clumsily), eat, and drink on his own. He was even mock wrestling Vincent the other day (who was very gentle with him). It was so cute! He laid on his back nipping at Vincent, who stood over him nipping back. His scar has essentially healed so I put him and Vincent back together in their cage. Baby doesn't like to climb things anymore, so I'm hoping Vincent will teach him how.

He still does the stiff arm thing whenever I try to pick him up and put him in front of his soft food. How do you know you love your ferrets? You crunch up their hard food in a mortar and pestle every night so that they can eat wet food. I haven't bought a coffee grinder yet, mostly because I'm still hopeful that he'll start to eat his hard food on his own, but if he doesn't I will.

Vincent's been a real trooper about this. He still sulks, and he's gained a lot of weight, but I'm hoping that now they're back together in the cage, he'll calm down a bit. Last I checked in on them, they were curled up together asleep.

Just got back from Pender - Baby's back in overnight care at the recommendation of my regular vet at SEAVS.

This morning was awful. I went to visit before work and he just laid in my lap, breathing hard, occasionally grunting in pain, very limp. Even his whiskers were droopy. The good news was that he was no longer stiff limbed, but the bad news was that they couldn't seem to manage his pain levels. If I moved him too much his back legs would stiffen up and he would grunt, so I'm thinking it's more of a pain reaction then anything else. He didn't seem to recognize me when I was there. I pretty much cried the entire time I was there (I don't deal with trauma stress well. Like, at all. I cry. A lot.) so I didn't talk to him much, but I did hold him and pet him and tried to hum at him a bit. He likes it when I sing.

But eventually I had to leave to go to work. So I placed him back in the cage, said my goodbyes, washed my face and ran out the door. I was running late, so I had to skip breakfast (my plan was to get Starbucks). As I was coming in, I met up with my new boss, Bob, was going in too, so I told him what had happened and he said, "If you need to go do something with your ferret, just go, no worries."

I get a call at 8:30 to come pick him up to be taken back to SEAVS as it would be best for them to give daily care since they know what went wrong. That was a verrrrry long trip. I didn't get back to the office until 10. At that point Baby had perked up a smidge and since I was driving him, I could sing to him. I looked over a couple of times, and sang to him and he would look at me intently with his head up. Once I stopped, he would put his head back down and close his eyes.

And of course I had fucking Our Lady Peace on and I was choking out lyrics like, "You are my life" and "Mother will you think of me in your prayers/This 21st century is a mess/Oh you can try to fix it/But it breaks..." and even "Might not make it home/Can't leave here tonight/Not afraid to live/Not afraid to die/And hey, leave a light on for me." Pretty shitty time for the MP3 player to stop working without any other CDs in the car. Singing about cheerful butterflies riding on sparkling winds would have been waaaaaaay preferable.

So I go about my day not doing a whole hell of a lot because there's NOTHING TO DO but surf the web, thinking everything is fine. Around 2:30 I start getting a funny feeling that something is not quite right in the world. I started feeling slightly suffocated, my left arm went numb, and my heart started to pound (it was the same feeling I got right before I was laid off). I ignored it successfully for about thirty minutes and then I just couldn't take it anymore - I had to call SEAVS. I just knew something was wrong with Bear.

So I call and yup, something is wrong with Bear. He still has all of the same problems he had when I took him back over but now he had blood in his pee and what sounded like fluid in his lungs/chest cavity. And then the vet said the dreaded words no one wants to hear about a loved one: there's a good chance he's going to pass on. There were a whole bunch of qualifiers and caveats to that, but the moment she said that it was all I could think about.

There is one thing I've learned this summer that I don't think I'll ever forget - it's fucking hard to drive while you're crying. This was the second time in two months that I found myself driving home in tears.

So I made it home in record time AND in one piece (a minor miracle considering I was bawling almost the entire time) and got ready to go back out again. Before I left I made sure to play with Vincent who has been vacillating between "'Hi, my name is Cloud Stife' depressed" and "'My teeth, let me show you them' anger". He really, really misses Baby. In the interim Dad came home so I told him what was going on and he offered to drive me to SEAVS so I can visit with Baby and take him to Pender.

So we leave about 5:15ish and get there around 6:00ish and go to see him. He looked much better. He was still have the same problem, but he looked more alert and his whiskers were no longer droopy. I brought an old t-shirt with me from the cage so that he could smell Vincent and hopefully be comforted by that. He still wasn't moving much, but he did respond to my voice and petting. In fact, when I left the room, he tried to crawl over to my dad when he couldn't find me anymore. He also eventually curled up as much as he could into the shirt.

And he peed on me. A lot. Which was actually good, because we could see that the blood in his urine was no longer there. He's still breathing hard and he seems to be in a lot of pain, but we're very cautiously optimistic that he's on the mend. I'm hoping and praying that it's not one of those last moments of feeling as normal as possible before dying as some pets do. So, yeah, very very cautiously optimistic. It's now a waiting game.

What the vet is thinking it was was that he had a delayed allergic reaction to the anesthesia, which caused his body to overheat (over 107 degrees) yesterday which sparked his laundry list of problems. We're still concerned that there might be neurological problems.

Anyway, guys, thanks so much for your support and thoughts. I really appreciate it.

Yay! Jobbed! It's the one I mentioned in my last post - ok hours, good wages, nice people, and (and a really, really) sucky location. Herndon? Motherfuckin' HERNDON!?

So, now I'll be able to afford Baby's surgery instead of having to wait for a couple more months. Double yay! Now, I just need to schedule it. I'll need to take Baby from MP to Vienna, and then go from Vienna to Herndon all of which will most likely take place during rush hour. Normally, no traffic, it takes me 45 minutes to get to Vienna from MP. With traffic it becomes an hour plus. Supposedly it's only 21 minutes from SEAVS to the new job. (I don't doubt that, at say, TWO IN THE MORNING it takes 21 minutes, but rush? Hah! And again I say HAH!)

I do believe I have the market cornered in this particular circle of traffic hell. Or, triangle. Or whatever.