Goodbye Bella

Having the “Fourth” holiday happen in the middle of a week always throws me off.  For example I got up yesterday and never once considered sitting down to blog…  until about 10:30 my wife asked me something about it and if I was going to call it “the weekend”.  In truth I have felt a little out of it for the last week or so, mostly because a whole bunch of things have happened.  Firstly we had the whole “dog adopted us” thing, which caused us to completely screw up our sleep patterns.  For months now our Eldest ferret has not been doing very good, so there has been a daily routine of cleaning up after her.  Monday evening when I got home from work, I went to check on her and found that she had passed peacefully during the day.  We sort of knew it would be soon because we had been feeding her this nutrient soup, and Sunday night she refused to eat any…  and also refused to drink much in the way of water.  In some ways finding she passed peacefully curled in a little ball in one of the warm beds is a relief…  because its like she drifted off to sleep and just never woke up.  Whatever relief I am feeling however is outmatched by the general sadness of knowing she is gone… so it is a truly mixed bag of emotions.  At the same time we have been trying to double our attention on her cage mate who had been watching after her as the signs of aging got worse.  The challenge with ferrets is that they are extremely wiggly creatures… and as a result I have tons of blurry photos of them scampering and playing…  but not a whole lot that are nice and relatively still.  The above image is of a much much younger Bella and I managed to snap a few shots where we can actually see her face.  She was my girl, and would follow me around while I was doing whatever…  until I would finally go pick her up from the play pen.  Feeling more than a little broken at the moment.

You aren’t going to get much in the way of a traditional post out of me today.  I just don’t feel like talking about gaming and such.  So I will just leave you with another photo, this one shows Shiloh as well and is one of the few “scamper” shots that actually has Bella in focus.  In my four decades of life I have had to say goodbye to a lot of animal friends…  and it never really gets any easier.  In fact finding these photos this morning meant scrolling through a bunch of shots of Little Shit and Chloe as well…  and that sorta tore open its own old wounds.  I guess that is the challenge of the digital age…  you have a mountain of available photos available at a moments notice…  even if those photos are sometimes hard to look through.  Bella came to us with her name… and she was a rescue from someone who could no longer take care of her.  The original owner said it was short for Bellatrix as in Bellatrix Lestrange from the Harry Potter novels…  but I sort of think it was the worst possible name for her.  Firstly she was a blondish/white ferret…  which might have fit Narcissa but not Bellatrix.  Secondly she was one of the most loving and cheerful ferrets… and not at all similar to her cruel namesake.  We kept it because she seemed to respond to it, though I imagine she was responding more to our voices than a specific name.  She was our little escape artist, and I am sure at some point during my blog I have written about the fact that she figured out how to leap out of a marshall farms play pen…  leading us to zip tie plastic cardboard signs to the top to keep her from gaining traction and flopping over to the other side.  She had not been much of an escape risk for awhile though, and mostly just wanted to snuggle at all possible times.  She loved being carried around… and often helped me go fetch this or that around the house.  I am trying really hard to pour extra attention on Shiloh because I am sure she misses Bella…  but also because it helps me as well.  Bye baby girl.