Cablegirl’s heart breaking post for today inspired me to write about my cat Rex. He’s a year and a half old tuxedo cat and he is currently living with my parents in Pittsburgh until CB and I pick him up in March (less than a month, wheee!). I remember when I adopted Rex; it will be two years this July. But to tell this story, we have to begin at the beginning.

We have to begin with ferrets.

I got my first ferret as a graduation gift, of sorts. I bought her from a breeder in Lancaster and her first act as my pet was to bite me in the face. Thus she was named Scylla and while not an incredibly cuddly pet, she was smart, contrary and bitchy. You had to love her though, once you got to know her…we were actually alike in a lot of ways. If a ferret can be a pet-type soulmate, she certainly was mine. After I’d had Scylla for about a year I decided to buy her a friend. I went back to the breeder and got a big boy ferret that I named Brutus. A fluffy, clumsy brute with acid reflux. Yes, I had a ferret with chronic heartburn. He would wake Scylla and I up almost every night with these weird little gasping noises he made a few hours after eating. The breeder found out later that this was caused by acid reflux and that Brutus’s sire had the same condition.

When I moved out of my hellhole in Mount Oliver and into a nice efficiancy apartment, I was told by the elderly lady who signed the contracts that the clause in the lease that said only one cat allowed wasn’t strictly enforced and I could have Scylla and Brutus as long as they lived in a cage (my parents got them a four floor mansion to celebrate the move). Two months after moving in, the superintendant came to fix my phone jack, saw the ferrets and reported me to the landlords. They said that I had been misinformed and that the only acceptable pet was one cat. If I didn’t get rid of the ferrets I had a month to move out.

I begged and pleaded and offered to pay extra but they wouldn’t budge. Crushed, I called the breeder. Bless the man, he offered to take them back and even gave me a fifty dollar payment for their cage because he felt so bad. So the 15th of June that year, Mom and I loaded my babies into the car with their cage and drove them back to the house they were born in. I hugged them and cuddled them and said goodbye. The breeder offered to give them back if I could get out of my lease within the year, but I knew I was saying goodbye to them forever. They were in the best place for any ferret to be and I wouldn’t take them away from that.

I cried the whole five hour ride home. I fell asleep with the miniblinds and the window open that night and a breeze made the blinds clack together. I sat up and looked over to the corner where the cage used to be, looking for Brutus to be stumbling down to the litter box of Scylla climbing from the hammock to scratch an itch. But it was empty, and so was my heart. I’d had Scylla for almost 2 years and Brutus for about 7 months. I couldn’t sleep without they noises of bickering and dooking and clambering inside the cage. I couldn’t bring myself to wash my comforter because I needed the ferret smell to feel comfortable at night. I waited for a month and then decided that I needed a new pet.

(to be continued next Friday)