Two bits of news today... I'll get the first out of the way. Moving date is in 14 days.

The other news is that this morning we had to make an emergency run to the vets for Ana, Nic's ferret. (We have two, Ana is Nic's and only likes him; Cino is mine and only likes me.) Nic went to get her out of the cage before goign to work and brought her to me crying and saying she was ill. One look at her and I told him that he needed to call the vet because she wasn't just not feeling well, she was obviously dying.

She was rising ten years old, which is fairly ancient for a ferret, when the average is between six and eight years with many of them dying younger from adrenal disease or the like. So he called his boss to let her know and we went in to the vets. The vet was a substitute (not the guy I didn't like at Dr. K's, this is the ferrets vet and a different clinic all together) and was actually a lot more up to date on ferrets than the normal vet. She confirmed what I'd guessed and figured that with the suddenness of the decline it was probably a brain tumor that had been there for awhile impinging on vital areas and causing the sudden problems. She said she looked healthy otherwise aside from the obvious and said that it showed she was confortable since she had no bedsores or pressure marks (they always had hammocks and thick layers of bedding) and recomended Nic send her to the Rainbow Bridge.

So we're wishing gods-speed to her. Ana was definitely not "my" pet... she was her daddys girl through and through. Nic could do anything with her and she was docile as you please but would nip me no matter how kind I was to her. (Cino is her opposite, a big dopey male I can do anything with but who figures Nic is tasty.) She was a character though, a shrimp and a scrapper and like most ferrets a tornado into everything. She was also a bit of the end of an era. As well as being his pet of nine years, she was also the last link to part of his life... his mum and grand-father having passed away, the dove last year and Charlotte (his mum and grandfathers red-heeler) a year after his mum. All in all a rather melancholy day.