Oregon Ferret Shelter celebrates 26 years of service

On Saturday, May 14th, the Oregon Ferret Shelter celebrated its 26th year as a shelter for homeless and abandoned ferrets. Many volunteers and fans of ferrets showed up to show their appreciation for this Oregon City, OR, community resource.

To commemorate their years of service, a lovely cake was presented to Dave and Chris Mathis, the owners and operators of the shelter. Stephanie Whiteside and her family donated the cake as a token of their gratitude. Stephanie's ferret, Dookie, was also happy to put his paw of approval to the donation.

About 50 pounds of food was donated as "birthday presents" for the shelter inhabitants. This is about half of what the shelter needs for a full week of feeding the resident animals; typically, the shelter uses 90 pounds of food per week. Several types of ferret food were donated, including the shelter favorites of Totally Ferret and Zupreem.

Stephanie Whiteside and her family also brought a great present for all attending ferrets: tiny party hats! Each ferret was given a paper cone hat with a little piece of elastic to wear. Although few ferrets wanted to keep theirs on for pictures, there were some fuzzy kids who managed to get their photos taken. Many thanks go to the Whitesides for their wonderful sense of humor and their generosity. (A small note here: Never let your ferret play unsupervised with elastic or anything that is easily swallowed and not easily digested.)

Chris Mathis was deeply moved by the donations and seemed overwhelmed with gratitude. She would like to thank each and every person who came out to help the shelter celebrate their years of community service. She also extends an invitation to all people who love ferrets to come to the shelter's meetings, which are open to the public and are held on the second Saturday of each month. To see when the next meeting is scheduled, please go to the Oregon Ferret Shelter's website at:

http://www.oregonferretshelter.org/news.htm

Chris would also like to mention that this upcoming weekend, the Oregon Ferret Shelter will be at the Beaverton Farmer's Market for their Animal Welfare Day. The booth will be open from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. For further information, please go to the following link for the Beaverton Farmer's Market.

http://www.beavertonfarmersmarket.com/newsletters/BFMmay2/newsletter.html

Post with your name or at least a nickname

If you want to post, use a name or a nickname. I hate all of you pissy whiny jerks who post nasty anti-ferret notes anonymously. You can all die in a gigantic bonfire. If you don't have the guts to back up your comments, then go slink off into your pile of offal and stink up some other place.

Seriously, why do I even have to tell people that they have to be nice on this board? Do people really have nothing better to do than anonymously post on a pro-ferret board? Really. If I ever find out who did that, there will be some hell to pay.

Oh, and if you have a problem with this and call it "censorship", I would like to remind you to FUCK OFF. Yes, this isn't a public forum. You don't have "the right to be anti-ferret" or whatever stupid rhetoric the animal abusers are using as an excuse nowadays. This is a place for people who love ferrets to talk about their pets. So go somewhere else.

Elvis: My New Ferret Friend

When you are fostering a new ferret, you get to meet someone entirely new, someone who looks at your house in an entirely new way. And so it is with Elvis, our newest foster guy.

Elvis has been here recuperating from his tumor removal surgery for a little more than a week.

Today, I let him out by himself. He tootled around the house a bit, looking at all the places where the other ferrets store their toys and treats. Then he came over to me.

He very carefully crawled up on the couch next to me. Then he sniffed around my ear, and started licking it! Then he eagerly started licking my face!

I was so shocked and pleased that I started giggling. And, of course, when you get the Giggles, it's hard to stop. But Elvis seemed to like that.

Next, he surfed down the blanket onto the floor, where he turned on his back and looked up at me. It seemed to be a cue for something. I tried tickling his belly -- no, that wasn't it. I thought, "He remembers that he used to do something with his human, and he expects me to do it too. I wish I knew what it was."

That is some of the saddest part of adopting older ferrets (Elvis is 4): seeing the pieces of their previous life that they bring to you. I wish that when people dropped off their ferrets, they would give a list of what their favorite things are, their tricks, their moods, and their favorite toys. That way, we wouldn't have to guess what the ferret wants when he looks up so eagerly at us. We would know.

Axe Shampoo: Animal Lovers or Axe-holes?

In the fall of 2010, an Axe Shampoo commercial appeared on local network television. It did not show ferrets in a very good light.
The commercial shows a man next to a woman at a gym, working out on treadmills and flirting a bit. Then another man turns on a fan, which starts blowing on the couple.
Dirt and grime starts to fly out of the man’s hair. The grime hits various patrons of the gym at high velocities.
Suddenly, a fake ferret detaches from the guy’s hair and flies across the room to hit a weightlifter in the crotch. Then the shot changes to the floor, where a young ferret (it looks like almost a baby ferret -- it still has that soft baby fur) is walking on the floor.
Next, you see the guy shampooing with Axe Shampoo. Then, in the sauna (Who goes in the sauna AFTER you shampoo and shower? You'd just get sweaty and stinky again. Dumbasses.), the woman is rubbing his hair in a sensual way. You hear: “Lose the grime. Get touchably clean hair with Axe Shampoo and get some hair action.”
From this, we are supposed to surmise: Ferrets are stinky animals that smell like sweaty man-crotches, having this smell is like throwing dirt in strangers’ faces, and covering up ferret smell with Axe will get you laid. Oh, and throwing baby animals is funny and safe.
Axe’s parent company, Unilever, says that they are “committed to the elimination of animal testing.” They want us to believe they care about animals.
What do you think? Do you think they love animals? Let Unilever know how you feel about this anti-ferret message by contacting them at: http://www.unilever.com/resource/Contactform/?WT.LHNAV=Contact_form.

Someone called the ASPCA

So someone read my blog, but they didn't post to it or let me know what they were thinking. They felt compassion and righteous anger over the plight of shelter animals. They turned that feeling into action, which is a good impulse. But they didn't do the right good thing. Instead, they called the ASPCA and reported Chris Mathis, the shelter owner.
So the ASPCA came out and looked over the ferrets. And they gave the OK. Because, of course, all of the ferrets are well cared for, get regular exercise, have food and water, and clean bedding, and their litter boxes are cleaned regularly. No ferret ever goes hungry here, or has less-than-adequate housing. Ever.
The only thing they need? HOMES! Yes, HOMES! Loving caring homes where they can be held and cherished every day by someone bonded to them. That is the one thing we cannot provide -- the sense that they are a beloved part of a family. That's where you come in.
Seriously. If you want to help, don't call the authorities. Chris deals with them all the time. She knows all the people, and believe me, if there was ANYTHING bad going on at the shelter, they would come down on her like a frickin' hammer. LIKE A HAMMER!
Oregon has some very smart and dedicated animal control workers, and they work very hard to make animals safe here in Oregon. Chris is one of the good ones. That's why I am so very proud to be one of her volunteers.
Chris has a small but very loyal core of volunteers to help her. If you want to help those ferrets, call her at 503-557-8369 and join us. You can help in dozens of ways. You can help clean cages. You can trim fingernails. You can write an article for the newsletter about how much you love your ferret -- and send a picture of your ferret in too! You can make a ferret-based craft to sell at our Weasels Dancing in the Park auction. You can sew sleepy sacks or hammocks.
You can always get us stuff for the ferrets. You can go buy wood pellets at CBI feed in Redland. They are located at 17141 S Redland Rd. Their phone number is 503-925-8903. We can always use food that we purchase wholesale at West Coast Seed, 503-657-3473 (Zupreem Ferret Diet). We can use any type of ferret diet and even Costco's Maintenance Cat Food in the dark purple bag. Any ferret food is good -- we never know what a ferret will be eating when they come in, and it takes time to switch their diet over to the nutritious stuff.
There are probably a thousand other ideas I am just not thinking of at the moment, but maybe you can think of them and tell us in a response to this post.
Please, come be a part of this noble endeavor. Help us to help ferrets. Call Chris at 503-557-8369. If you want to make a REAL difference, call our number and don't call the ASPCA.
And if you REALLY REALLY want to help, come adopt a few of these guys. The best thing for them would be to get adopted. Read our materials, read "Ferrets for Dummies", read other books and stuff online about ferrets, then come and get a few. Ultimately, that's what we want for these guys -- to be adopted out to loving, knowledgeable homes who will never let them go. So prepare yourself, then come take a look at some of our kids in our Petfinder listings at http://tinyurl.com/OFSPetfinder. Then call for an appointment: 503-557-8369.

Argh. So many little guys.

So I heard today that the shelter now has more than 200 little ferrets to feed. I went there to take some pictures. I have to start taking pictures quickly because if I stare over the rows and rows of furry heads for too long, I start to get freaked out.

While I was there, we had one return, two relinquishments, and one adoption. That's a three to one ratio of in to out. That can't be good. And this was just for a few hours.

After I went home and showered (cause photographing ferrets is sweaty work), I let out my own furkids to play. I have 10. I was wondering to myself if there was some way I could support more. Even though I KNOW we cannot afford more, I still ask myself that question every time I come home. It seems like I cannot possibly be doing enough.

OFS summer newsletter is HERE!

Yay! I finally put up the electronic version!

http://www.oregonferretshelter.org/OFSNewsletterSummer2010.pdf

Whew! On to the next project!