Dustbunnie

by Adalia
(Kentucky, USA)

When I was twelve, my mother and stepfather bought an albino ferret who was still very young (I don’t remember how old, but if I cupped both hands together she could curl up on top of them, so she was pretty small). My mother and stepfather divorced not very long after that, so I technically don’t know for sure what happened to her, but since my former stepfather got back into drinking and drugs and is half-dead himself from what I hear, I doubt Dustbunnie is still alive.

I know he didn’t take good care of her once he moved away from us because I did see her once after the initial separation and she had turned from the sweetest, most lovable and playful ferret you can imagine into a vicious, biting ferret, just in a couple of weeks and probably as a result of being constantly caged up by herself, without even a second ferret to play with. There was a second ferret in the house, belonging to my former stepdad’s sister, but although the cages were right next to each other they were kept separate and never allowed out.

I hope at least that if Dustbunnie is gone, it wasn’t painful. I’m living with my mom again now and we have two ferrets, Wookie and Jinxie, given to us by a friend of my mom’s. My mom’s friend has another friend who works in a pet store, and whenever they have a ferret who cannot be sold due to something fixable, she can’t stand to see them put down and she brings them to my mom’s friend. He trained Wookie out of biting (which was why he couldn’t be sold) and Jinxie was actually bought and the little girl who owned him abused him; I don’t know how he ended up back at the shop, if he was returned or what, but I hate that parents will buy a child a ferret way too young and not even bother to research the pet to make sure the child is capable of caring for it!

Just the other night my mom tried to pull Jinx out from under their cage to put them back inside after playtime, and Jinxie panicked and tried to bite her so she dropped him (not far, she was sitting on the floor when she picked him up) and he ran and cowered under a shelf in the corner until she coaxed him out and cuddled him for a bit to make him feel better.

Wookie and Jinxie are both okay now, but I hope wherever Dustbunnie might be she is okay too, and I hope these two will be around for a long time to come.