We love our animals, and while we knew when we bought these from a lady off of Craigslist for $25, they were 5 years old (have had them for about 9 months) I hoped we would be able to have them for at least longer than that. They had not been taken care of very well, their fur was dull and dingy and we fed them good ferret chow and within a month they were shiny and soft and so cute. The little boy had a lump come up on his breast (one of them) about 3 months ago, and we watched it very carefully and he wasn't in distress and he ate, played and pooped just like normal. About the last 4 days we noticed that he was slowing down, and wanted to sleep all the time, and Wed. evening we went to check and he had passed in his sleep. His sister is now lonely, and I checked on her tonight when I got home and she is not happy. They have been together for the past 5 years, and I am afraid that I will lose her to a broken heart. She looks at me like she is asking me "where is bubby?". It's so sad, and its just a Ferret!!!! If I thought I could introduce another one to her, I would try to get one, but then would have to go through the same thing when the older one passed . . .does it ever get easy!!! Also had one of our little white boy mice pass too, but he was OLD and I knew it was going to happen. . .DS took it pretty good, because we had talked about it when it first showed up (the lump( so he took it pretty good, and I think as hard as it is, its a good thing for kids to go through, because its part of life, but its still hard to deal with!!!
