So we had a very bad day recently. Warning, this story doesn't have a happy ending.
We've had our bino boy Morty since 2017, when we took him and his sister Rikki home. They were very shy at first, Morty especially wandered as far as the first corner he found and lay there so long he fell asleep. But they were soon made welcome by our other lot (at the time that was Mia, Bobbi and Rocky).
Morty soon got confident, he could demolish a chicken wing and grew very big, he weighed 2kg at one point! He and his sister played very roughly, but I'm pretty sure she was always the boss. Morty would squeal when she bit him too hard.
Oddly enough he learned quickly to stay away from our oldest girl Mia while playing, despite her being a quarter his size she must have firmly told him to back off!
He was a very needy ferret, and a big soft lump. If he wanted attention one of his favourite tricks was to flop onto his back, belly up and look up at you with big pleading eyes.
We took him for walks and he loved digging in sand and dirt (typical bino) but then would scratch at your leg when he wanted to be carried for a bit. One time we stopped to talk during a walk, and turn we looked down and he'd curled up in the long grass for a nap!
In the last month or two, we noticed he wasn't as lively as usual, although his belly seemed big he had actually lost weight, he wasn't eating well.
The vets found out that he had a very enlarged spleen so we made the decision to have it removed. This was risky as he was an older ferret by now, but it seemed best to try as he was not having a good quality of life as he was.
He got through the operation well, afterwards he was very lethargic we spent lots of time giving him cuddles. He had a little grumbly cough at first, the vet said it was from the anaesthetic tube and it did seem to subside, although he was still noisier then usual when eating or when he got excited. But he was eating better, wandering around exploring, and even almost interested in playing with a toy.
But then in a couple of days the noises he was making were more frequent, and we took him into the vets for further tests. By the time we got him there he was clearly struggling with his breathing so the vets put him on oxygen and tried to do an x-ray. He still wouldn't stay still enough. The vets said they could sedate him, although in his current state this was high risk. I said do it, as the alternative was just to euthanise anyway.
They were expecting to find something wrong with his lungs, perhaps fluid they could drain. What they found was that his trachea had collapsed and this was something beyond their surgical skills on such a small animal.
I came back into the vets, and got to cuddle my sedated boy for a little while before he was peacefully let go.
So this has been nearly two months of worry, vets bills, close calls and hopes rising and falling. Would I do it again? Would I do anything differently?
Ultimately I wouldn't change a thing (in what I could actually influence i mean). The surgery didn't keep him with us any longer but i think until the last two days he was in less pain, he was certainly acting more like his old self, and we got that time to show him how loved he was.
I don't know if the surgery caused the trouble with his trachea, apparently in older ferrets these muscles can just get weaker and they can have a partial collapse which can be hard to spot, so he may have had trouble for a while before the full collapse. But taking his spleen gave him room in his belly again, and he was able to have one last taste of all his favourite treats, so honestly it seems to me it was worth the risk.
This is of course part of what you sign up for with pets, you're generally going to outlive them. We gave him a good life, and no matter how it hurts I'm going to try to keep giving a good life to others too.
Next time I'm going to tell a story about rescue ferrets, but for now I'm just going to remember the gorgeous Mortimer J. Ferret xx
