On a recent Saturday under Ramada No. 6 at Reid Park, ferret aficionados picnicked and chatted, boasting about their wee ones' latest exploits, exchanging diet and medical information, and snapping photos like proud parents.

Meanwhile, the objects of their attention and affection - 18 frisky ferrets - were busy hopping, waddling and crawling around several pens. The fuzzy, slinky creatures burrowed under blankets, crept through tunnels made of crinkled dryer hose and dug furiously in a bin of topsoil, stopping occasionally for a tussle with a playmate.

Ferrets are domestic animals, the cousins of weasels, skunks and otters, according to the Web site www.ferretcentral.org. The long, silky animals also are related to minks, ermines, stoats, badgers and polecats. Biologically, they fall somewhere between dogs and cats, though they are a little more closely related to canines.

In the Old Pueblo, a dedicated group of owners belong to Ferret Friends of Tucson, a nonprofit organization that is part club, part rescue group.

The first thing most ferret lovers mention about their pets is how much fun they are.

Robin Kladke, vice president of Ferret Friends, first became acquainted with the skinny creatures when her adult son moved back home, bringing with him two ferrets.

"He wasn't really paying too much attention to them, so I started taking care of them and I became addicted," she said.

She adopted two of her own and started fostering the animals for Ferret Friends.

"The more you get, the more fun it is," she said. "As long as they're getting along together, it just gets crazier and crazier" when they play.

"Maybe that's why six works so much better than two," said Kladke, who has half a dozen.

Ferret Friends has 30 ferrets in foster care, and the organization always needs volunteers to help with animal care and to provide foster homes.

Ferrets love to play on their own, but they also like to interact with their human companions, playing with cat toys, running through tubes and being dragged along the floor while they hang onto a towel.

"People will tell you all day long about the fun stuff regarding ferrets, but you need to know about the nutritional needs and the medical stuff when problems start popping up," Kladke said. "I'm real big on knowing your animal. Whatever animal you own, be aware."

Some people, such as Ferret Friends Web designer Michelle Schwerdtfeger and foster parent Kathy Young, get ferrets as a compromise.

Schwerdtfeger had three cats and wanted a dog, but her husband didn't. As a compromise, they got a ferret. But as most ferret lovers realize, you can't have just one. Soon Schwerdtfeger adopted two more and now has five foster ferrets, too.

Young has a similar story. She was sharing a small apartment. She wanted a hamster; the other renter wanted a cat. They settled on a ferret. Young now opens her home to foster for Ferret Friends.

When Young is interviewing prospective ferret owners who want to take home one of her fosters, the "big thing I look for is (whether) they're going to be committed to the ferret for the duration of its lifetime. They have to be willing to take care of the ferret for the rest of their lives. Depending on the age of the ferret, it could be a six- or seven-year commitment. And also that they're good with animals, that they will love the ferret and give it a lot of attention."

Another Ferret Friends foster parent, Don Heywood, knows all too well what happens when the wrong person gets a ferret. He has 11, and many come from abusive or neglectful homes. Two were severely abused. Change's teenage owner threw him around a room during a violent rage, and Missy's face was crushed when her owner's boyfriend punched her in the head. When they arrived at Heywood's home, they were afraid of people and demonstrated their fear by biting.

No matter how often they bit Heywood, he said, "I give them even more attention. I just throw the love on them, and they come around."

Change stopped biting after three months, and although Missy - after a year in Heywood's care - still sometimes bites when she's frightened, she's now a fun-loving ferret, he said.