That is the question!

Oh I love it … the paranoia, the neurosis, the hyperventilating at midnight … NOT!

I sometimes wonder why I ever fell in love with ferrets as pets, and I think my poor husband curses the day that I did!!

I usually shut all the gang up in our bedroom around 5pm most evenings. Kahlua, Muis and Angus always sleep in the chest of drawers but Seamus usually spends his day sleeping in the cushions of our sofa.

Either Philip or I grab him and put him in the bedroom and then we close the door to keep them all inside till it’s time for me to go to bed. When that time happens, I always check to make sure they’re all there (paranoia) and then I lie down and read, and usually fall asleep by the time Philip comes to bed.

We always shut all the doors to the other rooms at night and once he’s done that, Philip opens the door to the bedroom and the ferrets can go to the kitchen and laundry area, eat, drink, make merry and then come back to sleep.

The other night we were woken up by the sound of breaking glass. I didn’t know how that happened but as Philip got out of bed, he remembered he put a glass down on the camphorwood chest when closing the sitting room door and forgot to take it to the kitchen.

Well okay – no big deal, especially as he had to get out of bed to clear up the damage. But then I decided to check on the ferrets. I found Kahlua, Angus and Seamus all sleeping peacefully in the drawers but no Muis.

Right away panic set in. Where could she be? I called Philip and asked him if he knew for certain that she didn’t slip out when he let our dog out before coming to bed. No, he said, Muis was definitely in the bedroom when he came in and she had been cuddling me.

“But where is she?” I asked. “There’s nowhere for her to go so if she’s not sleeping in the drawer, she must be outside!” I cried, feeling that horrible lost-ferret fear seep over me.

Out came the squeaky and I went into each of the closed rooms to see in case she’d got trapped there by mistake. No Muis but the squeaky woke the others up and they all came rushing to me, quivering with excitement.

But still no Muis, even though she normally comes when I squeak.

By now I felt sick to my stomach, really convinced that by some strange misfortune, Muis had got outside and was probably miles away from the house.

Thank God for Philip. Being the cool, logical person that he is, he decided to check all the areas where she might have got to. He went into the laundry and saw my rag bag behind the door. He felt inside and – hey presto! – pulled out a very sleepy Muis from the bag!

That bag had been on the floor behind the door for weeks and she had never shown it any interest. Just for one night, she decides to go and have a change of scenery and caused me to age a hundred years. Typical!

Well, feeling a whole lot less stressful, I moved the bag up out of the way, took Muis to our bedroom and then tried to get back to sleep, with 3 hyperactive ferrets all bouncing on and off the bed thanks to my squeaking. It took a little while but finally we all managed to get back to sleep.

Ahhh, the pleasures of ferret ownership!!!

And yes, I know if I caged them all up at night I’d be spared all this excitement but … sorry … I won’t do that so my bad! At least this gives me something to write about :-D

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Filed under: Ferret Proofing • Ferrets as Pets

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