From:
pienka@aol.com
Date: 2002-06-09 16:00:00 UTC
Subject: need help, sick fuzzy
Hey guys...this is my first post. It has been cross posted to the
newsgroup. My little Raindrop is having some problems. There
haven't been any significant changes lately. She is a 4 year old,
she
has a 3 year old brother and a 1 year old sister. The youngest has
been with us for about 4 months and recently got her shots but I
don't think that would affect the oldest. Anyway, she is a VERY
active and determined ferret. It always amazes me how goal driven
her behavior is, not like the youngest who is just hyper and crazy.
This one is smart, gets into everything, never wants to be held etc
etc. Anyway, last night, all three were out playing around. They
had been out about an hour when I heard one of them
wheezing/coughing. I looked underneath the chair (no one was
sitting in it) and she was under there hacking. We picked her up,
she seemed very listless and her backend looked funny. She was
breathing very rapidly and, I don't know, didn't look right. After
about 2 minutes, my husband put her down and she seemed to be having
some problems with her back right leg. He picked her up and I
started calling
emergency vets. Apparently, while he was getting stuff ready to
take her, she was drooling. We put her in the ferret carrier and
she didn't even explore, just sat there looking around. Once we got
her to the vet, she was a bit more active although she was still
breathing very rapidly. He said he thought she had eaten the wrong
thing and gave us some medicine for her, mitro something or other.
We kept her seperated from the others last night in our bedroom.
She
appeared to sleep fine, ate about 1/8 of a cup of food and drank
about 1 oz. She pooped three times and we did not find anything
unusual in the stool. We kept her seperated for 24 hours. We just
let her out with her brother and sister and she still seems
incredibly lethargic. At first she was playing a bit with her
brother (they have been together for 3 years and are only 6 months
apart in age). After a while, I didn't see her so I came into the
study and she was standing in the hallway. She let me pick her up
and hold her for several minutes. My husband came in and agreed
that it was very odd behavior. He held her for a few seconds and
she scrambled to get down. She went straight into a cat
tunnel/scratching post that we have for them and went to sleep. This
is very strange behavior. There are no obvious lumps on her body or
sores or swollen areas. Her adrenal area looks normal and her
temperature is fine. Anyone
have any suggestions?
~Lesley and David
Raindrop (aka trouble), BrodieFinn (aka hedgehog), and Loki (aka
crack monkey)
(the ferrets)
StormCloud, ClearSky (the dogs)
Medea and Medea's Karma (the cats)