…died yesterday.
I had him longer than I had Kevin – Napolean has been with me ever since the summer of 2005, and Kevin became his ferret’y dad when we married a year later.
He loved playing with his bell toy, snuggling in warm rags, and bouncing around the room. He had this little plastic squeaky toy shaped like a little man in a blue coat that he would drag around the house with him. When excited, he would make a chucking/kissing type of noise, and when he was upset he would hiss.
Shoulder rides were his favorite thing (besides his little blue man), and he was good at giving kisses. He would even jump in my arms from the floor when I reached down towards him.
He was a good, funny little guy and my heart is broken that he’s gone.
Although we didn’t know it until a few months ago, Napolean had kept a huge secret from us his whole life – he was actually a girl. It took a sharp eyed neighbor to fill us in. We tried calling him a her for a while, but old habits die hard – and we finally decided that Napolean(a) would forever and always be a “he” to us. I’m sure he really didn’t mind.
His nicknames included “Poley”, “Snicky Nicky” and the occassional “Snickelodeon”.
His cage is forever empty now, and his food dish is sitting there on top, never to be replenished again.
The little jingle bell wooden toy that hung in his cage these past 3 years will be going into my memory box. It’s hard – I keep thinking I hear his jingle bell rattling like he does, then it will hit me that he’s no longer there to rattle it. I cried for hours last night. Kevin said he even shed a small tear on his way home from work after I told him.
We’re about to bury him in the backyard. We made him a coffin out of Kevin’s size 14 shoe box, and wrapped Napolean up in a nice dish towel.
He’ll be buried with his water bottle, and the little blue man that he loved so much in life.
