For those of us living in the Antipodes, summer is well and truly among us and especially here, in Western Oz, it’s hot hot hot.

I know many ferret owners know the dangers of ferrets and heatstroke but for some of you newbies out there, please be careful if you have ferrets and they live outside in cages. Make sure their cages are under some kind of shade and if you see your ferret panting, you should freeze a couple of 2L bottles full of water, wrap them in towels and put them in the cage for your ferret to lie against. If you can put a fan outside to blow air on the cage, that’d be helpful too.

No, it’s not a trick question I seriously wonder if they do!

My Mojo has totally broken the mould I had for albino ferrets. I always considered them to be wonderfully smoochy, loving little things, then along came Mojo!

I’ve never known a ferret to be such a Jekyll and Hyde She’ll cover my face with kisses some days and play with me like I’m her best buddy. Then, in a matter of moments, she’ll change. If I pick her up to get her to kiss me again, she’ll turn her face away and that’ll be that. No more kisses from the little madam.

A ferret friend sent me a link to an article in Pet Wiki about new advances in dog cancer, pointing me to the paragraph written by Dr Ananya Mandal in June 2010, which said …

“Queensland, Australia scientists have discovered a drug to cure cancer that has effectively worked in animals and is to be tried on humans in the next phase of trials. This drug is plant-derived and is called EBC-46 for trial purposes. The plant from which it is obtained is found in the Australian tropical rainforest. The drug has shown to reduce inoperable tumors in 150 dogs, cats and horses and a ferret to a significant extent. The drug was developed over the past six years from the seed of a rainforest plant found in the Atherton Tablelands. Scientists had cultivated their own plantation of the plant since forming the company QBiotics Limited in 2004.

I was looking at Mojo the other day and realised her tail looked like it was losing hair just at the base. Can you see what I mean here …

Her fur looks just a little bit less at the very top of her tail compared with half in inch below. My heart sank. Having thought Seamus had adrenal problems last year, then finding out that Angus definitely had that disease this year and now Mojo?

I turned her on her back and saw her bald patch …

It’s been a terrible two weeks

Seamus seemed to pick up a bit after his bad teeth were removed but after a few days it started to get harder to get him to eat. I thought that maybe his mouth was hurting him so I made an appointment to see the vet on Tuesday. She checked his mouth and said everything was looking good but just to be on the safe side, I should go back to giving him his antibiotics twice a day.