Hotspur.us

Our house has four bedrooms. One belongs to the ferrets. One is ours. One is the small guestroom and the last is Bj’s room. Or that’s what we call it,  even though he left. We used to call it the Lizard Room. But that makes it sounds like not only do we have a room just for ferrets (and laundry) but we have a room dedicated to lizards. We don’t, just to be clear. Anyway.

I’ve been meaning to get around to ripping up the carpet in Bj’s room.  It’s icky and has a large melted spot that was there when we moved in. But like many home improvement projects around here, there’s a long way between meaning to do it and actually doing it.

I was finally spurred into action when Shadowfax decided she wanted to help by digging at and shredding the exposed carpet padding on the room threshold.

So after work I took the first big step and started ripping.

I wasn’t sure what I would find. All in knew was that this room, like the landing,  had a subfloor. I held out hope that the presence of a subfloor meant no nasty laminate tiles stuck directly to the original floors. I’d already done battle with the aforementioned tiles in our bedroom and preferred to not have to repeat it.

Unfortunately when I ripped up the padding, I was greeted with the above sight. Grocery store green sticky tiles. It was all I could do not to vomit.  But wait.

These tiles were popping off to reveal some weird black, sticky…paper? What is going on here. I grabbed the paper stuff and it peeled back to reveal wood coated in glue. Great.

I was trying not to freak out about this development when I finally remembered that there WAS most definitely a subfloor between all this nastiness and the original floor.

I took a deep breath, finished pulling up the remaining carpet and cursed the blind woodworker that was employed to work on the closet. (More on that later.)

Removal of the tiles and subfloor will be another day. As will repairing the bottom of the bedroom door, since in its current shape, not only could the weasels easily fit under it,  but probably the cats.

Yay for home improvement.

Mom and I packed up Fionnlaugh & Duncan and headed out to the Three Rivers Ferret Follies Fall Picnic & Fun Match. We had to leave poor Shadowfax with Chad since our girl has some serious anxiety issues about being outside. We’re working with that, but I thought it best she stay at home. I was excited for the furballs to get a chance to see other ferrets, maybe even some buddies they knew from being at the Hide-e-Hole Ferret Rescue before we brought them home with us in May.

I hadn’t been to a fun match for years. We had taken Fidget back when we were in college (yes, that long ago) and probably Fidget and Hotspur at one point. At the very least I was prepared with a big selection of costumes for the kids – none of which they like – when it came time for the costume contest.

Suffice to say the ferrets had FUN! Fionnlaugh won 3rd place in the costume contest as a frog – no I don’t have a picture, she hated the costume. Mom & I won some stuff in the raffle. I scored some awesome treats for the kids and then we all went home and collapsed! Well, except Shadowfax who spent the day scaring poor Chad by hiding in a new spot and then finding and dispatching a mouse.

Duncan was over the top adorable when he slowed down for a few seconds. Pretty sure he knew I had a camera.

Fionnlaugh was also posing and being utterly adorable.

Duncan started off with a bang in the flower pot dig….

But was soon distracted by the bag of potting soil, as were quite a few other ferrets.

Fionnlaugh tried her hand at the cup tip, but like pretty much any of our previous ferrets, while she can tip a cup like a champ at home, if it’s empty she’s disinterested. She got a few knocked over, but that was mostly by accident. And, being such a wee lass, she walked right between them without even touching the cups! We’re gonna have to do some training at home in the off season.  These are really poor quality photos, but I was trying to shoot with one hand and ferret wrangle with the other.

Duncan didn’t do much better and for the same reasons. He’s bigger than Fionnlaugh, tipping the scale at just over 2 pounds, but he’s no widebody by any means. And then he got distracted. Big surprise!

Probably the funniest contest was the ferret chariot. We didn’t participate since I figured no way would either Duncan or Fionnlaugh stay in a box while I pulled it behind me.

The ferret in the yellow chariot won. His little girl took off and he stayed in! I was super impressed.

By that time my two kiddos were winding down and pretty tired.  So we let them go back to their carrier and pass out.

If you want to see some really good up close and adorable pics from the event, check out these from Iheartferrets. The photographer captured a bunch of the ferrets in costume. There’s a pic of Duncan in his costume. He’s the king. He wasn’t exactly happy about it either.

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It is with very heavy hearts that Chad and I bid farewell to the feline matriarch of the family,  the top cat, our girl Ghost.

Our very loving tabby cat ended up with us by mistake. While out for a walk, Chad  spied a litter of stray kittens being taken care of by a kind lady. He had his eye on the tortoise shell kitty. The entire litter was hell on wheels. We came away thinking we had the right kitten. After getting this little ball of a kitten home, she pretty much disappeared. The food was eaten, the litter pan was used…we had a Ghost. What we didn’t realize for probably at least a month, which was when we finally were able to get a good look at her, was that she was not the tortoise shell kitty. She was the tabby!

Once Ghost realized that humans weren’t all that bad, it didn’t take long before she turned into a full fledged lap fungus. If there was a lap, she was on it. If there were multiple laps, Chad won out every last time. There was no doubt that she was his kitty.

Over the last 18 years Ghost took it mostly in stride as we added ferrets and other kitties to the family. Although I don’t know that she fully ever forgave us for bringing our boy cat Freyr home “for her.”

She traveled with us to Palmyra and Charleston on a regular basis. The move to from apartment to house to bigger house didn’t ruffle her fur a bit. She walked around like she owned the place, which she pretty much did.

There are so many funny, cute, amusing and adorable stories of Ghosty. But this one keeps popping back into my head. When I was stuck home with a broken elbow,  miserable, awkward and stuck in bed,  Ghost came up,  delicately snuggled up to my hugely bandaged arm,  and gently placed her head over the break and just purred. She didn’t poke me, she didn’t want pets. And she didn’t move. She just sat and purred on me.

Bye baby girl, we’ll miss you. You were a good girl.

P.S. She’s with the band