The Secret to Low Maintanence Shedding

My girls shed twice a year. Once at the start of summer and once when switching to their winter coat. Each shedding lasts about two weeks. Kyra has used shedding to significantly change her coat color. She was jet black when I got her and lightened with each shed. Now, in her old age, it sort of looks like she is graying.

This is Kyra just two weeks ago.

This is Kyra (and friend Toto) maybe two years ago. I didn't have any good pics from when I first brought her home. It was before I had a digital camera. But you can still see the difference.















When Kyra first started shedding and she was just my first new ferret, I thought I should brush her as I had done with my past cats and dog. However, after wasting much money on all kinds of brushes that never worked on a ferret, I gave up.

A few years later, while using one of those sticky rolling brushes for removing their hair from my furniture, I had a great idea. Why not remove the hair at the source? I have been lint brushing my girls during shedding time ever since.

Please make sure this is a pleasant experience for your ferret. Only brush downward on their hair. If it seems too sticky brush it over your couch or something a few times and try again. All three of my girls have never displayed any discomfort with this. Just give them a few strokes to get the loose hair. This is not a shearing.

The best way to do this is to just take the brush and let the ferrets wrestle with it as you rub them. They love this!

Replace hand with brush. Enjoy!

Pottery Class Bowl

My second piece of pottery is complete. I have managed to take a lump of clay, mold it into a shape, trim it, and glaze it without breaking it. Yay! This is my first completed wheel spun piece.

I present "My Bowl."

Public Service Announcement: Can Toppers

Just wanted to give a little warning/review of these handy-dandy new pop can tops we've been seeing in infomercials and in stores.

I bought mine with great hopes. It proved to be easy enough to pop onto the top of the can. And is later simply removed by crushing the empty can causing it to pop off. I wanted this little beverage accessory for two purposes. 1. To take opened but unfinished cans of pop along with me in the cup holder of the stroller. Open cans/cups spill out from the bumping of the stroller. 2. To put unfinished pop cans into my purse to take home instead of having to throw out a half finished one.

The results are in.

1.The top works just fine for stroller travel and is easy to drink out of. I assume it would be successful in car cup holders as well. The caps are also nice to have when outside or at the parks to keep unwanted insects out.

2. Next I used it to carry a can of pop home in my purse. This resulted in everything getting soaked in my purse. It leaked out almost the entire can in just a few minutes. My credit cards and money were wet inside my wallet.

This is all my stuff drying. Everything was wet, even with my gloves and a magazine absorbing so much.

This is my poor purse hanging inside out to dry. Grrrr!

Final comments: Despite the disaster this product caused, I would recommend buying it. But use only for upright purposes. It functions as a cover, not a seal. Oh, yeah, and its not dishwasher safe. It melts. So I will be buying another the next time I'm out.

I'm A Model You Know What I Mean

And I do my little turn on the X-ray machine. Wait, what?

Yep that's right, my beautiful Fawn is a model. During her stay at the vet, right before her adrenal surgery, a representative for one of the x-ray type machines came to the office to photograph it for their brochure. They decided to use Fawn as a model. The vet tech told me she was very good and posed beautifully for the photographs. While I won't get a chance to see these professional photos, here are some other pictures of my beautiful Fawn.

At The Lake

At Play

Looking Adorable

Kyra Speaks Out

Hi, Its me , Kyra. Mom has no idea I'm writing this, but I had to tell you what she did to me this morning.

Mom was doing laundry. One of me and my sisters' favorite times! We like to run around and burrow in the piles; sometimes stealing a sock or two. (Of course never the same two socks.) Then right when mom goes to take the first load down, we have disappeared. This makes mom freak out and think one of us might be in the load. She runs around calling for us and finally pulls us out from under the couch. We hid in the same place every time. Genius, I know! Mom calls this a head count. She's always doing this after she packs a suitcase, or storage under the bed, starts the dish washer (when we had one) and of course before washing a load of laundry.

Anyway, this time I decided to burrow into the sheets pile on the floor and take a snooze. Well a little while later mom came rushing in and grabbed up the pile. I went rolling out, right onto the hardwood floor! Ouch. What a way to wake up! Sure she was all, "oh, baby, I'm so sorry!" She gave me cuddles and tucked me into her favorite blanket in the blanket basket. But I don't know, is that enough? I shouldn't say this, but this little incident has happened before.

Well, I guess I'll forgive her, but maybe I should stick to sleeping under the couch.

Public Service Announcement: Respect the Power of Your Ketchup

At a recent brunch with family members, my aunt mentioned that she goes through a bottle of ketchup about every two weeks. Wow! I hope that's due to her children and grandchildren coming over for frequent home cooked meals. My mom and I said we use about two bottles a year.

Now, I like ketchup, and I use it for a lot of things. But somehow it manages to last around six months. Good thing it doesn't expire for about a year or two after purchase. However, it is still important to check your condiments and spices for expiration dates. I did this this afternoon. I threw out a bottle of Ranch dressing that expired last year. (I don't think I've used it since last year either. I've been on a vinaigrette kick lately.) I have two things ready to expire next month, and my garlic powder was past date in 2006. I use this garlic powder all the time for home made garlic breads and pizzas. Never noticed. What prompted this clean out? I'll tell you.....

Friday I came home from work and began to make myself a veggie patty sandwich. As always I got out the Light Mayo. When I lifted the lid I noticed a slight drying of a small section on top. Lid must not have been tight, right? Then I thought, "How long have I had this Mayo?" I couldn't remember ever not having this particular Mayo. "This can't be the same Mayo I had when I moved here. I just bought the same kind again. Its my favorite." I checked the expiration date----wait for it----here it is---2008! I had been eating expired Mayo for two years! That's eggs! Eggs that expired two years ago! Ewww! I can't believe I never noticed. There was no smell, no discoloration, no mold. Just a slight dryness after two years. Kudos to milk for that powerful warning smell!

What can we learn from this? Check your stuff, people!

That goes too for the stuff we give to our ferrets. I noticed right away that Marshall's food has no expiration date printed on it. I don't know why this is, but it makes me nervous because I have bought the food in bags covered with dust. Its ferret food. It doesn't fly off the shelves like dog food. Anyway, I have no explanation for this. Do you? But I do give my girls Bi-Odor, Milk Thistle (just Kyra), FerreTone, and Ferret Lax when needed. All these have expiration dates. They are also greasy and will smudge off these important dates by about the third time you use them. Please remember to record these dates soon after purchase and post them on the fridge or where you store the items.

If this post saves one person from eating a sandwich with 4 year old mustard, then it has served its purpose. Healthy eating to you all!

Creative Carrying

This weekend I did too much shopping. I was actually lucky. There are several items I knew I wanted , but they only existed in my head. I have been internet searching for them for quite some time. I was lucky enough to find a hamper that met all my imaginary needs. When I arrived at the store to purchase it, I found that it was packaged in a HUGE square box. No handles, no humanly way to possibly carry this home without a car--that is in its current form. I asked an employee of the store if they could attach a box handle or wrap something around the bottom that I could hold onto at the top. This is what the creative employee of The Container Store came up with for me.

She tied bags together, wrapped them around the box, and created a handle at the top.

Disclaimer: No bags were thrown in the garbage as a result of this creation. They are being prepared for their second purpose. As well as the box. -Its the perfect size for safely storing large pictures.

Other winners in this purchase are the ferrets. The old mesh hamper that they have been so enjoying climbing and ripping is now solely theirs! Have at it ferrets! Have at it!

Another purchase -being delivered- is a chest/toy box for all the ferrets' toys. Now instead of a heap of toys in the corner of the living room, I can put everything in a fancy toy box they can play inside of or I can take some things out for them. Yay, for all of us!

Look Ma, I made a basket at school!

After the long cold winter, I realized I had not left my apartment (except for work) for several weeks. -Yes, I even have my groceries delivered.- So to get myself out and establish a non-work goal, I joined a pottery class. We focused on wheel throwing instruction and I was able to complete two bowls and a vase. The rest of the attempted masterpieces were broken at various stages of their creation. Only one of the days was spent on hand building. I found this much easier. If you messed up, you just moved the clay strip to the right place. In wheel throwing, if you mess up your piece collapses and goes in the scrap pile. Then you get to start all over with another lump of clay; all your hard work up to that point is scraped.

Technically the class session is over, but since I was sick and missed so many classes, I have been allowed to come back and finish my work. This weekend I picked up my now glazed hand built basket. It looks like a five year old made it, but for some reason I love it and am so proud of it. The bottom half was supposed to be turquoise but for some reason the glaze didn't cover the whole surface but ran and pooled in some places. I was sad about this for a minute and then I decided to get over it and love the basket anyway. I'll ask my instructor why this happened and then maybe I can avoid it next time. (Just like how the second time I trimmed a vase it didn't shoot off the spinning wheel and smash into a blob.)

Fawn and Kyra Play Hide N Seek

"Kyra, what are you doing?"



"I want to play Hide N Seek!"

"Okay, I won't look."

"One, Two, Three, Four...."

"Here I come!"

Okay, this was the location for the video of the Hide N Seek game, but with the inability to upload videos, it has now become like a joke without the punchline. This is very sad. I started this blog because I was unable to send videos by email! Boo!

Surgery Recovery

Its about time I give an update to Fawn's surgery.....



This is a picture of her incision after surgery. It looked really good; no swelling and not much redness at all.



Ten days later she got her stitches removed. For a few more days she had some scabs which fell off on their own. Here's a pic with stitches removed. You can see her hair stubble growing in.

Hopefully she will heal as well as Kyra. Kyra has all her hair back and no scar at all.

As far as her recovery and pain management go...I was surprised to be sent home with no pain meds and only antibiotics. She was on pain meds at the vet for two days. She came home the third day. By the fourth day she was running around and wrestling with my sweater as I gave her rides on it across the floor. I was going to post the video of this active display of miracle healing, but it appears I am unable to load videos anymore. I've been trying for days so now its time to just give up and get some of these video-less posts out.

Now, a few weeks after surgery, there is barely even a mark left. You can tell, as with Kyra, there will be no scar. I can't believe it. Ferrets are amazing! --And so is her vet!

Kyra's 6th Birthday

Kyra turned 6 years old this April 25th. Sadly I have been very ill so there was no celebration. She did however receive her yearly distemper shot. Yaayy, oh, wait, what, that's not pleasant? Oh, well it will keep her healthy. Here are some pics to enjoy the life of Kyra....

Baby Kyra Meets Snow

Baby Kyra's First Animal Friend, Bear the Cat
She's showing him her cool tube.

Kyra Joins a Playgroup!

Kyra Loves to Wrestle with Mommy

And Play with Her Sisters

Well, Mokey Loves It!

My mom bought me a beautiful sweater for Christmas, but it just didn't quite work for me. It worked perfectly for Mokey, however. She loves it! Mom, how could this not make you happy to see what joy your sweater has brought?