Rainbow Bridge 2016

Welcome to the Rainbow Bridge, where we honor the ferrets who have left us for the next great adventure.

Kenai

Bam

I joined this website last week, but I was too late as my Bam crossed the Rainbow Bridge on December 28th.

Bam was my first ferret, but right away I could tell he was a familiar soul. I loved him the second I saw him. My brother bought him from a petstore, but he was meant to be mine.
I did not know anything about ferrets, but tried my hardest to learn as much as I could take in. I tried feeding him raw, but gave up. He fought me every step of the way. A few months into his life I adopted Star, a middle aged ferret girl to be his companion. We lost Star to adrenal disease a few years after.I did not replace Star. I decided to keep Bam a single ferret. Keeping him alone and feeding him kibble are my biggest regrets.

When he started exhibiting signs of insulinoma I passed them off as his clumsiness and possible depression due to the loss of Star. It took a year and half for me to finally take him to the vet for an unrelated problem (enlarged spleen). During the examination we had a brief talk about diet; my vet asked me to stop giving him the treats I was feeding him and trying to up his protein intake. I truly believe that he would still be alive had he not been kibble fed.

I did as she said. He crashed.

Within a week and a half he had four seizures. I frantically called my vet after the first. She suggested that I may have accidentally been treating his insulinoma with the sugar-ey treats I had been giving him. She suggested to try and control this with diet as steroids were too dangerous due to his splenic problem.

He had two more seizures in that week. The last one on Christmas morning that left him without use of his legs. He soiled himself. He was limp. He was panting. His body was contorting. I don’t know if he was in pain, but a seizure in such a tiny body must wreak havoc.
Surprisingly within a few hours he came back to me, but I was noticing his episodes of hypoglycemia getting very frequent. To try to keep him from going into seizures I would give him sugar in the form of his treats (FuroVite). It was the only way to keep him from seizing, but was also setting the scene for another hypoglycemic attack. There was no winning.

I was a mess. I woke up every few hours for two weeks to keep checking on him. I was terrified of finding him having a seizure, or finding he had died alone.

I watched the video on this forum of a ferret having a screaming seizure. This ultimately made me make the decision that I made. I did not want Bam to go through this kind of seizure. He had been through enough.

On December 28th I made the call to my vet to have Bam euthanized.
I was with him the entire time and held his head and kissed him good bye. He was five and a half years old.

I will forever remember my soul mate. My familiar.

Thank you for reading.