meet the business: a lesson in ferret math

ferret math is a term well known and well loved by just about everyone who has ferrets. ferret math is the concept that one ferret plus one plus one equals seven. no, we're not talking ferret breeding. that's a whole other issue which i have no knowledge of nor do i wish to have any knowledge of. the best way to define ferret math is to explain how i wound up with eight ferrets before meeting fry.

it was innocent enough. i decided to get a pair of ferrets. i like to give a second chance to critters so rather than looking in a pet store i went on craig's list. i found an ad a woman placed to "re-home" her two ferrets. the two ferrets and their cage and all their supplies for $300. a hefty price, but still cheaper than going to a store. plus i was giving two ferrets a second chance rather than them ending up at a shelter.

enter butch cassidy (known as cassidy, or cass or cassie, because i don't like the nickname butch) and the sundance kid (affectionately known as sunny d, or d-d).

2 ferrets.

you may want to get paper. this will soon get sticky.


so i started reading books and blogs and all kinds of ferret stuff. the popular belief, which i'm a believer in, is that if you have only two ferrets and one dies the other will die of depression. so even though cass and d-d were not even a year i wanted to get them a friend.

once again, i wanted to give a ferret a second chance. this time i went to the humane society. when i was there i found my little princess miss nyddah. she had been an after hours drop, little was known about her. she had a cyst on her lower abdomen. and she was scruffy looking. she was definitely ragged around the edges. and dying of depression. now don't get me wrong, i love the human society people, but she was lonely because the ferret surrendered with her had been adopted and she was all alone. humans have bred ferrets to be social. i asked to hold her and she snuggled into my chest, reached up and licked my chin and looked into my eyes and pleaded with me to take her home.

enter my baby girl: nyddah grace.

now, i adopted nyddah just about a month or so after getting cass and sunny. so i was still pretty new at this ferrenting. i thought i was all big and bad because i'd read tons of stuff online, i'd read the books and i thought i knew it all about ferrets. i didn't know anything.

so i was content. i had three ferrets, two boys and a girl. they all got along together. they loved to play with me, they seemed rather content and i was very content. this is where a rational person would probably stop. probably.

i was on craig's list looking for ferret supplies and someone was asking for happy stories about pets. they said there were too many sad ones. so i posted a happy adoption story about finding my boys and my nyddah and how they had a second chance and we had a happy little home. and then i got a message.

a couple was looking for a new home for their two ferrets. they weren't able to give them enough attention and they wanted someone who could dote on them the way they deserved. this was only ten days after i got nyddah. now two ferrets to three to five all in six weeks is a lot for anyone. and i thought about it. and thought about it.

they guy i was dating at the time had four ferrets and tried to discourage me. my friends told me five ferrets was dangerously close to turning into the crazy cat lady, except with ferrets.

but i went against everyone's opinions and said sure, i'd take in podo and doodle.

five ferrets. one of them deaf (doodle).

five would have been a good place to stop. kind of a lot, but at least you're not measuring your pets in terms of dozens or portions of dozens. and i did stop there for a while.

here is where the crazy enters. and even i will admit that this is a bit on the kooky side of the street. so i mentioned i was dating a guy who had ferrets. over christmas of that year i watched his ferrets for something ridiculous like 20 days while he was out of town. while i watched his ferrets my boy cassie fell for his little girl lily. for whatever reason those two ferrets really bonded with each other. cassie even would look for her when i asked "cassie, where's your lily bear?"

as things happen the guy turned out to be a first class jerk face. broke up with me two days before valentines day and admitted he'd been cheating on me. yeah. like i said, WORLD CLASS jerk. so, since we broke up, obviously our ferrets broke up. i did try to fight for custody of lily but was unsuccessful. so cassie was sad and moping and being a good ferrent i tried to figure out a way to cheer him up.

which, of course, would be another ferret. once again i went on craig's list (and yes, at this point someone should've banned me from that website) and found someone looking to re-home a ferret. her name was marley, she was six months old, and the girl just wanted someone who could give the little fuzzbutt the time she needed.

i'd haggled over price a bit with marley's former owner and we came to an agreement. then, after she met me, talked with me and saw all the ferret pictures on my iphone (a few hundred or so at that time) she gave me marley, her cage, and all her bedding for free. she said that she knew i'd give marley a wonderful home and that was most important to her.

a week after st paddy's day marley came home to her new little family.

now six ferrets. that's a lot. and at that time i had a half dozen ferrets. so that's kind of a lot and i really should've stopped there. but this is ferret math which exists somewhere outside of the normal dimension and rules of math. so we press on.

that summer i was once again on craig's list. i can't recall why, in a way it doesn't matter. and i came upon daredevil. a little blind albino ferret looking for a new home. his owner was a young man getting married and couldn't bring him with and the guy's parents couldn't keep him. so i agreed to take him in. it turned out to be ferret hospice. i think daredevil was just too old to get used to a new home. i had him five weeks before he crossed the rainbow bridge.

so up to seven and then back to six. some would see that as divine intervention and i should stay at six ferrets. but the house felt lonely without daredevil. yes. i did just say the house felt lonely with only six ferrets.

enter craig's list again, aka the devil website. and i found linus and lucy. they needed a new home because their owners were moving to a new apartment and the new place would not allow rodents. ok, let's not even get into the ignorance of the rental company that they kept insisting ferrets were rodents despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. and so i added linus and lucy to my brood to make it eight.


dear god, yes i said eight. now, in a way eight isn't too much, on the other hand, eight is sixteen ears to clean, eighty toenails to clip, and lots of clean up on poop patrol.

somewhere along the road to eight ferrets i may have lost my mind. but i regained my senses and while i would not trade any of my furbabies, i did realize that eight was my limit. any more than that was really not a good idea.

um, but i thought you said you had eleven at one point. yes, i did at one point have eleven. and this is where ferret math once again takes over.

so i was very content with my little, or not so little, ferret family. but, as tends to happen, my business was not meant to stay at eight. so about six months after getting linus and lucy i met fry.

he had two ferrets and, incidentally, found me online when he was looking for other people who had ferrets. no, it was not craig's list this time. another website. my profile was a bit outdated because it listed me as having only five ferrets. i know. only. but, to his credit he was not dissuaded by the thought, or even the reality, of my eight ferrets.

well, so fry had two ferrets and i had eight. well. after meeting me, reading more about ferrets, he decided he needed a third ferret in case something happened to smokey or bandit, he didn't want them to become depressed and despondent. so about a month after we met he and i took a mini road trip to st. cloud and picked up our tiny girl, cupcake. we found her on craig's list. surprise surprise, right? who didn't see that one coming?

well, then not too terribly long after he brought cupcake home we decided to make our two homes one. so me, my eight ferrets, and all of our chaos picked up stakes, moved into his house, and turned things upside down. so, fry's ferret math went: 2+1=11. it happens that way sometimes.

but we are blessed. our balls of fluff bring us quite a bit of joy. they give me peace. our house may not be big. it may not be fancy. and it may not be on the cutting edge of trendy. but our walls are bursting with love. really, it's love, not ferrets.

pictured below (clockwise from bottom left): cassie, bandit, sundance (yawning in the back), linus, smokey, & doodle. for those still counting that is only six. do you know how hard it is to get eleven ferrets in one picture? nearly impossible.

new terms used in this post:
business ~ noun. term used to describe a group of ferrets.
furbabies ~ noun. affectionate term used to describe "kids" who are not human. used in this case to refer to ferrets, but may also refer to dogs, cats, or any other pet that is like a child to its owner/pet parent.