Devastating News - Making a Euthanasia Decision

Last night I was almost certain Stimpy was going to die. My ferret just lay on his side, making panting noises now and then. I had to use a medication syringe to give him water. He peed on himself, and I thought he was gone. By this morning he was up and eating again. I called the vet to let her know I wasn't going to keep him on the antibiotics. Her advice was to consider euthanasia when the time was right, because I could spend a lot of money on diagnostic tests only for what she feels will be a diagnosis of cancer. He's most likely not going to get better from this.

Stimpy is probably going to die fairly soon, but hopefully it will not be today. This little guy is the light of my life. I can't begin to describe the connection I have with him, and how devastating it will be to live without him. However, because I care more about his needs than I care about the pain it will cause me, when I feel it's time I will take him to the vet to be put to sleep.

It's not an easy decision, by any means. It's one that I've been thinking about since the day I got him, though. I knew it would come. Ferrets in North America are not very healthy. They're smaller and lighter than their European counterparts, bred in breeding mills, some of their healthiest traits bred out of them for the sake of breeding in gentle qualities to make them more 'suitable' as pets. Every time I thought of the day I would lose him, I would cry, so I tried not to focus on it while still considering the problem of this awful decision that I am now faced with. I did not know how the hell I would let him go.

I finally came to an internal resolution, a decision that I was at peace with, that had specific criteria in determining when the time was right. For as long as he is still living a life where he's getting some enjoyment out of it, and is not suffering all the time, I will keep him with me. Once he gets to the point where he's suffering the majority of the time, with little to no reason to stay alive, my feelings about letting him go will no longer matter. He will be allowed to go so he doesn't hurt any more than necessary.

I feel the same way when it comes to humans, except for some reason we force humans to stick around longer. The ones who suffer feel they have no choice, not just because governments don't allow them to kill themselves with any assistance, but because they know their family does not want to let them go.

This just might kill me, having to say goodbye to Stimpy. I still can't explain the connection I have to him to anyone who has never felt it. I've had lots of pets, and loved them all, but Stimpy was different even before I brought him home. He lived with other people, friends of my ex, and when we went to see them he would try to climb up my arm. Even though he was nearly an adult when I brought him home, I've known him since he was a kit (that's the name for ferret babies), played with him when he was at his feistiest, and connected with him right from the start.

I even told the people he lived with that if they ever wanted to get rid of him to call me. The daughter was ignoring him, so I got a call one day to ask if I still wanted him. I almost said no, because I'd done my research on ferrets and everything I'd read said they were a lot of work, always getting into trouble. I would have to ferret-proof my home, and the state of my life had already exhausted me to the point where I didn't feel I was up to the task.

Then I thought about Stimpy, who was called Stewart back then, and wondered where he would end up if I didn't take him home with me. I didn't think that people who were willing to get rid of a pet would care all that much about where he ended up. I said yes, and he's brought me immeasurable love and joy every single day since then. There isn't a single day that's gone by that I haven't been grateful for his presence in my life, and there isn't a single day where I haven't spent as much time with him as he allowed. I'm lucky to be at home with him all the time. Even when I wasn't disabled I worked from home.

Every animal I've brought home has been basically a rescue animal. I don't buy from pet stores. I hate that they sell live animals under those conditions, not caring where they go or what happens to them. Besides, there are so many animals in shelters and elsewhere that need good homes. The ones in the pet stores get bought based on cuteness factors, or for the idiotic Christmas gift, and then a few months later a lot of those same twits end up bringing the pet to a shelter. It costs about the same to get an animal from a shelter, since they have expenses, too, including the vaccinations and neutering/spaying. If you get an animal from a shelter, however, they care enough to make sure all their medical issues have been taken care of. A pet store will sell a sick animal, and sometimes even a dying one.

At the moment Stimpy is back to being his cute self. He's curled up on my bed with Pepper, the other carpet shark (ferret) in the house. He's eaten a couple of times on his own since last night. He's gone pee in the proper place, rather than all over himself like he did last night. His illness is so up & down that it's difficult to understand what's going on. I think, if he's still okay at the end of the month, I'm going to have the x-rays done anyway. It's not cheap, but letting him go without knowing for sure that there was nothing that could be done may be a little too much for me to live with after the fact. As I told the vet, I'd rather go without food than have him go without vet care.

My biggest concern, once Stimpy is gone, is how Pepper is going to handle it. Ferrets grieve and get very stressed when a so-called cage mate dies (I say so-called, because I don't have a cage). From the time Pepper was brought in to live with us, he's been attached to Stimpy. Stimpy, on the other hand, probably felt he could do without the little bugger. He clung to me for days when Pepper first arrived. He was terrified of him. He'd spent very little time with other ferrets, and was only used to cats and dogs. Ferrets are a little more difficult to deal with. Pepper was a feisty one, too. Once Stimpy got used to him, though, they would romp through the house chasing one another, war-dancing and dooking.

Now that Stimpy has gotten older, as well as being sick, he's nowhere near as playful, but the first thing Pepper does when he wakes up is go looking for Stimpy if they're not already sleeping curled up together. He will roam the whole apartment, searching for his buddy. If we have to put Stimpy to sleep, Pepper is going to have a very hard time dealing with it. I was hoping to get a third ferret before Pepper had to say goodbye to his buddy, so he wouldn't be completely alone afterwards, but I doubt there's going to be time for that now. There's also the expense involved, when I have to think about the vet bills I'm already dealing with. Pepper still needs to be neutered, and that has to be done before we bring another ferret home. This is his territory now, whereas before it was Stimpy's. Pepper might not be very nice to another ferret coming in, so the neutering will diminish a lot of potential aggressiveness. It has to be done anyway, considering the smell of an intact ferret can be pretty pungent.

I've learned something about dealing with the death of a ferret when it comes to the ones left behind from other ferret parents, though. A few people I know have made sure their pet sees the other one after they've died. They get a chance to become aware that they're gone, and say goodbye. It seems to work. I have to say, if I have to watch Pepper run around, frantically looking for Stimpy, it'll kill me. So, I'm seriously considering bringing Pepper with us to the vet when the time comes to let Stimpy go. I say "when" because there will come a time when we have to let him go, even if his issue isn't cancer and something can be done to treat him. Unless he leaves us on his own, of course.

I was pretty sure he was going to do just that last night. I had him lying beside me on the bed, giving him a head rub (something he likes and comes looking for when he feels well enough), giving him small amounts of water from the syringe and hoping to revive him. After a while I switched to water that his food had been soaking in, so he got at least some nutrients from it. I'm not sure if any of that actually helped him, but he sure revived after that. I couldn't believe my eyes when he toddled over to the corner to go pee and then went straight to one of the kibble dishes to start munching.

If Stimpy had no interest in food or water, and was no longer able to void his bladder or bowels, I would say he might be ready to go. He has an interest in living, though. He wants to eat, drink, sleep and be petted. He's not lying there listlessly, depressed about his life. Ferrets are normally pretty good about that, though. There have been exceptions where a ferret was depressed as a part of his or her nature, and they gave up on life very quickly. In Stimpy's case, however, he just keeps going on, wanting to stay right where he is. If that changes we'll know. Basically we're leaving the decision up to him, I guess you could say. If he lets us know he no longer cares about being alive, we will release him.