in memoriam
Aug. 23rd, 2007 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonI was all saudade last night thinking about how Cully had passed away on August 22, 2000--I can't say sad exactly, because enough time has gone by that I can easily think of the happy things as well as my grief over losing him. When I went to bed, Seti climbed up into the bed and curled up next to me in his little sleep sack (yes, he has a bed on our bed). I'm sure he could sense something. Ferrets are often good like that. It was extra fitting as he looked so much like Cully as a kit--he was the reason I bought pet store ferrets rather than adopting, I couldn't pass by this little guy and think of him going to anything less than a perfect home.
I had had my first ferret, Amelia, for about a year and thought it would be nice to get a companion for her. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I knew I wanted to adopt this new ferret, and I heard about a friend of a friend who had to find a new home for her three year old ferret. She spent a lot of her time out at her parents' house where there was a large dog that wanted to eat him, and when she wasn't home her roommate was too scared of the ferret to let him out of his cage, so she felt that she wasn't providing a good home for him. She had adopted him a year or so earlier when he was dumped at her vet's office; she had just lost a ferret to juvenile lymphoma and the vet offered to give her the abandoned ferret to somewhat make up for it. So, I went and met this ferret, and he seemed pretty nice, a little shy. The girl who owned him said he did like to chase feet and that's why her roommate was so scared of him. I had encountered people who would leap onto a chair if a ferret entered the room, so I didn't think much about that.
So I brought him home, and Amelia immediately started chasing him, until two days later she cornered him, he bit her pretty hard, and after that it was simmering warfare between the two of them ever after. When they were old, they could tolerate each other, but unlike most ferrets, these two just never got along.
Once the ferrets figured out that they hated each other and Cully started paying attention to people, I learned that his former owner's roommate had some good reason to be scared of him. He was a serious biter, as some of you who may be reading this know quite well. He didn't break the skin that often, but his teeth left bruises, and it hurt. He generally bit out of fear. Even if he bit you when there didn't seem to be any reason for him to do so, it was his way of being a tough guy and trying to convince you that you shouldn't mess with him. There were times that I could see that he actually didn't want to bite and would feel compelled to do it anyway. He made me cry with frustration sometimes, between biting me and the squabbling between the two ferrets (luckily Amelia was always smaller, faster and a better climber, so she was easily able to evade him, but sometimes they'd really get into it). One of his less endearing habits would be to reach up inside your pants leg and pull down your sock so that he could bite your bare flesh. He could be diabolically clever.
After about a year or so, I could trust him not to bite me, not very often anyway. A real turning point in our relationship was one day when I took him for a walk. A bird flying overhead scared him, and he ran back to me for protection, asking to be picked up and snuggling in once I had him in my arms. I was ready to cry with happiness over that, that this damaged little guy could come to see someone, specifically me, as a safe refuge from the world. I don't know what his back history was like, but he particularly disliked men and dogs, and the fact that he was so afraid of everything and was clearly pretty unsocialized didn't indicate his first home had been much good. He didn't know how to play at first either, how to chase balls or wrestle with toys. That took him about half a year to learn. After two years, he would actually sleep on the bed or under the covers, usually down near my feet as the top half of the bed was Amelia's turf. He and Amelia gave me an enormous amount of comfort my last two years in Montreal, which weren't always easy.
When M and I got serious and he started staying nights over, Cully was clearly jealous, or at the very least territorially challenged. He bit the heck out of M for several months. This was one of the ways I knew M was a keeper, that he was able to put up with this crazy sociopathic ferret biting his legs in the middle of the night and didn't insist that I put him in a cage or otherwise freak out. The fact that he worked with the mentally ill probably helped. Eventually, Cully came to accept M and the night time biting mostly stopped. I think Cully bit him every now and then just to remind M that he could do it if he wanted to.
Cully was roughly 8 when he passed away due to lymphoma. He actually lived about a year and a half after his diagnosis of lymphoma, which is unusual but we did catch it pretty early. I remember it was a beautiful day, a Sunday, when it was time for him to go. I tried to give him his medications that morning, and clearly the lights were on but nobody was home. He sat on my lap in the sunlight on the front porch for a while, the most relaxed he'd ever been outside, and then we went to Angell for a mercy shot, again with him sitting quietly in my lap the whole trip there. I doubt he would have lasted much more than a day or so on his own anyway, but I didn't want to him to suffer at all. This was the first time I experienced the death of a pet who was all mine, not the family pets who died while I was away at school but just mine, with me every day. It hit me hard, but I took a lot of comfort knowing that I had made over half of his life happy, when a lot of people would have completely given up on him.
When we got home from Angell, there was an article in that day's Boston Globe Magazine about Angell's emergency service. I had been at the vet's a few months before when the photographer for the story was there, and he'd taken some pictures of my ferrets during their exam. M said "Don't open the paper" but I did anyway, and there was a beautiful little picture of Cully looking right into the camera. Later when I had words again I wrote to the photographer and to Angell telling them that Cully had ended his battle with lymphoma that very day, but that I was happy to see that he could help illustrate the story about all the good things Angell does. The photographer called me to apologize for the pain the photo must have caused--but really, it didn't cause pain, I was glad to see his little face in happier, healthier times, almost like he was saying hi from the past. I got an enlargement of it from the Globe's photo service and it sits on my dresser to this very day.
This isn't that photo, but it's one that I've always liked. It's a scan of a slightly beat up photo and to me now it looks like a memory, both in its physical appearance and its content:
I had had my first ferret, Amelia, for about a year and thought it would be nice to get a companion for her. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I knew I wanted to adopt this new ferret, and I heard about a friend of a friend who had to find a new home for her three year old ferret. She spent a lot of her time out at her parents' house where there was a large dog that wanted to eat him, and when she wasn't home her roommate was too scared of the ferret to let him out of his cage, so she felt that she wasn't providing a good home for him. She had adopted him a year or so earlier when he was dumped at her vet's office; she had just lost a ferret to juvenile lymphoma and the vet offered to give her the abandoned ferret to somewhat make up for it. So, I went and met this ferret, and he seemed pretty nice, a little shy. The girl who owned him said he did like to chase feet and that's why her roommate was so scared of him. I had encountered people who would leap onto a chair if a ferret entered the room, so I didn't think much about that.
So I brought him home, and Amelia immediately started chasing him, until two days later she cornered him, he bit her pretty hard, and after that it was simmering warfare between the two of them ever after. When they were old, they could tolerate each other, but unlike most ferrets, these two just never got along.
Once the ferrets figured out that they hated each other and Cully started paying attention to people, I learned that his former owner's roommate had some good reason to be scared of him. He was a serious biter, as some of you who may be reading this know quite well. He didn't break the skin that often, but his teeth left bruises, and it hurt. He generally bit out of fear. Even if he bit you when there didn't seem to be any reason for him to do so, it was his way of being a tough guy and trying to convince you that you shouldn't mess with him. There were times that I could see that he actually didn't want to bite and would feel compelled to do it anyway. He made me cry with frustration sometimes, between biting me and the squabbling between the two ferrets (luckily Amelia was always smaller, faster and a better climber, so she was easily able to evade him, but sometimes they'd really get into it). One of his less endearing habits would be to reach up inside your pants leg and pull down your sock so that he could bite your bare flesh. He could be diabolically clever.
After about a year or so, I could trust him not to bite me, not very often anyway. A real turning point in our relationship was one day when I took him for a walk. A bird flying overhead scared him, and he ran back to me for protection, asking to be picked up and snuggling in once I had him in my arms. I was ready to cry with happiness over that, that this damaged little guy could come to see someone, specifically me, as a safe refuge from the world. I don't know what his back history was like, but he particularly disliked men and dogs, and the fact that he was so afraid of everything and was clearly pretty unsocialized didn't indicate his first home had been much good. He didn't know how to play at first either, how to chase balls or wrestle with toys. That took him about half a year to learn. After two years, he would actually sleep on the bed or under the covers, usually down near my feet as the top half of the bed was Amelia's turf. He and Amelia gave me an enormous amount of comfort my last two years in Montreal, which weren't always easy.
When M and I got serious and he started staying nights over, Cully was clearly jealous, or at the very least territorially challenged. He bit the heck out of M for several months. This was one of the ways I knew M was a keeper, that he was able to put up with this crazy sociopathic ferret biting his legs in the middle of the night and didn't insist that I put him in a cage or otherwise freak out. The fact that he worked with the mentally ill probably helped. Eventually, Cully came to accept M and the night time biting mostly stopped. I think Cully bit him every now and then just to remind M that he could do it if he wanted to.
Cully was roughly 8 when he passed away due to lymphoma. He actually lived about a year and a half after his diagnosis of lymphoma, which is unusual but we did catch it pretty early. I remember it was a beautiful day, a Sunday, when it was time for him to go. I tried to give him his medications that morning, and clearly the lights were on but nobody was home. He sat on my lap in the sunlight on the front porch for a while, the most relaxed he'd ever been outside, and then we went to Angell for a mercy shot, again with him sitting quietly in my lap the whole trip there. I doubt he would have lasted much more than a day or so on his own anyway, but I didn't want to him to suffer at all. This was the first time I experienced the death of a pet who was all mine, not the family pets who died while I was away at school but just mine, with me every day. It hit me hard, but I took a lot of comfort knowing that I had made over half of his life happy, when a lot of people would have completely given up on him.
When we got home from Angell, there was an article in that day's Boston Globe Magazine about Angell's emergency service. I had been at the vet's a few months before when the photographer for the story was there, and he'd taken some pictures of my ferrets during their exam. M said "Don't open the paper" but I did anyway, and there was a beautiful little picture of Cully looking right into the camera. Later when I had words again I wrote to the photographer and to Angell telling them that Cully had ended his battle with lymphoma that very day, but that I was happy to see that he could help illustrate the story about all the good things Angell does. The photographer called me to apologize for the pain the photo must have caused--but really, it didn't cause pain, I was glad to see his little face in happier, healthier times, almost like he was saying hi from the past. I got an enlargement of it from the Globe's photo service and it sits on my dresser to this very day.
This isn't that photo, but it's one that I've always liked. It's a scan of a slightly beat up photo and to me now it looks like a memory, both in its physical appearance and its content:
