So close

Felix, in his old age, sleeps a lot. He likes his food mixed with warm water to make it softer on his old teeth. He's skinny and frail and sometimes he trips while scuttling across the hardwood floors.

It's hard to watch him get old.

Monday we had a close call. I made plans with Phil — visitation plans, I guess you could call them, since I hadn't seen him in more than a month — and thought we might take Felix to the park to run around like he used to do.

I won't get into the specifics, but Phil and I got into a curbside discussion about actually taking Felix out. I said we should, he said we shouldn't, repeat ad nauseam. So Phil brought Felix out to the car so I could at least see him.

So I scritched Felix and gave him as much attention as he would take before demanding to be let down to explore the floorboards. All of a sudden, while Phil and I are having still more discussions about other weighty things, we notice that Felix has just sort of splayed out in the floorboard and is drooling and can barely move.

This sets in motion a whirlwind of affairs I'd rather not relive, including hysterical, tear-soaked, speed-limit-breaking visits to two separate vet clinics that refused to see a ferret — even one in extreme distress. Talk about fucking pissing me off. Yeah, they're "exotic," but they're not fucking alien. I'm pretty sure any doctor worth his weight in student loans could figure out how to hook up an IV to a ferret and at least get him conscious again.

So yeah, Eastgate — you with your horrible website and your rude, rude doctors who loudly bitched and moaned about having to see a ferret while we were standing RIGHT THE FUCK THERE WHERE WE COULD HEAR YOU — and that other clinic on the corner of East Parkway and Central? You're both dead to me. Fucking Eastgate — I've been a customer there since 2005 and that's where my cats were fixed. But I'll be moving on to another clinic whose doctors maybe can be a bit more compassionate next time.

Okay. I digress.

The good news is that Felix did eventually come around. It took a while, but he started digging around in his towel and licking himself again. And then he would drink water and eat treats. Just half an hour before, he had been completely unresponsive, limp, and drooling everywhere.

I think maybe he got heat exhaustion. Phil thinks it has something to do with carbon monoxide poisoning. Whatever it was seems to have subsided, as Felix is now staying with me for a little while, and he's acting more or less normal. Right now he's curled up underneath my bed, dreaming little ferret dreams about rooting through flowerpots and tormenting rabbits.

I know he's not going to be around forever. But we got a reprieve this time.

Phew.