Everything Turns Out Peachy For This Furball

I’ve got a laundry basket on my hip, preparing to go out the back door to the clothesline. My cats are milling about my feet. I finally get the door open and suddenly a blur of fur darts INSIDE my house and races off into the kitchen. My cats proceed to lose their minds.

I close the door, put the basket down, and follow my cats, who now have something baled up behind the fridge and are hissing and yowling at me to make it go away. I look behind the fridge and see a small ball of fur. We have a lot of strays in our area, so I assume it is one of the kittens I have seen running through the yard.

I try the tested and true kissy noises, which only seems to get my cats to headbutt me and purr. I click my fingers, and the ball of fur continues to quiver and stays jammed behind the fridge.

After about fifteen minutes of this, I decide to pray to the cat gods and reach back there to grab it. I shove my arm behind the fridge, grab the furball, pull it back out, and realise I am holding a small, very ANGRY ferret by its butt. I manage to get a grip on its scruff and hold it, dumbfounded, while it squirms and tries to get away. My cats have realised how long the furball is and have performed tactical retreats. How brave.

While I stare at this ferret and wonder what the heck I’m meant to do next, I hear a knock on my door. I gingerly carry the increasingly angry ferret with me to the door and open it to find a neighbor from up the street and his clearly distraught daughter who is around eight.

Neighbor: “Sorry, love, I was wondering if it would be okay if we went in your backyard to look for my daughter’s ferret? She’s gotten out of her cage somehow and we’ve been looking for hours.” 

I pull my right arm out from behind the door, revealing the squirming fur-tube I am currently holding.

Me: “Is this her?”

Little Girl: “PEACHES!”

As soon as I handed the creature back, it was entirely calm, laying in this little girl’s arms like a baby and wriggling happily. I told them what had happened and the dad laughed, saying the ferret scared the h*** out of his cat, too. I even got to pet the little fuzzbutt now that it was happy and back with its small human. 

The dad marveled that none of the neighborhood dogs had gotten to it and said it was lucky I only had scaredy-cats. When I started laughing, he seemed confused until I whistled. From around the side of my house, my 70-kg pitbull/lab mix stuck his head out, saw the ferret in the girl’s arms, and whined, refusing to come any closer.

At least the cats had given chase; my giant “vicious guard dog” hadn’t even barked!