Charlie’s ferret Nora was quite the trooper. She was 9 (average ferret lifespan is 5-7 yrs), had cancer and diabetes for the last year, and generally she just kept on truckin’.

In 2003, in the midst of renovations, our neighbor announced “Yo weasel escape!” Sure enough, she’d scurried under some contractor to go explore the big wide world. After a week outside coping with cats, rats bigger than her, and God knows what else, she decided she was ready to be pampered again and came on home.

That Christmas Alison rescued a litter of tiny kittens whose mother had gotten killed. Nora was fascinated by them, but her idea was playing was to jump on the kittens’ neck and shake. Fun ferret play, but early on the cats developed a healthy respect and kept an eye on her.

Those kittens are now the size of moose, but they still trembled and fled when Nora got playful.

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Charlie’s in NY, and on Sunday she started getting really sluggish and un-Noralike. I took her in Monday morning, and they determined that her kidneys failed. They stabilized her, but she slipped away yesterday afternoon.

She was a huge presence in a tiny package and will be sorely missed.

(I have had a talk with the rest of the animals to tell them that I have had about ENOUGH of this and there is to be no more illness for a minimum of a year. That’s it. A moratorium has been called and there are to be no exceptions.)

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