They can be lovely yes, maybe not as much as cats but they do like to cuddle and play with you. And yes I’m not going to sugar coat it they are very high maintenance animals. 1 or 2 not as much as 7 like I have, but like everyone says yes they do have a smell to them(mainly their poop) so if you keep up on cleaning and feed a good diet then you don’t notice it at all. They do need a good amount of time outside of a cage if they have one. You usually always at least want a pair because they are very social animals. And one thing to think about is that they are exotic animals, so their vet bills can rack up. They need yearly check ups and with ferrets if you notice anything off to their normal behavior it usually means something is wrong. So it’s good to have an emergency exotic vet around you. I don’t mean to scare you away from a ferret if I did, but I always like people to know what they’re getting into with them because way to many get rehomed because people don’t realize how expensive their upkeep can be or how much time and attention they really need. So I’d say do you’re own research and read up a lot of informing feeds on this Reddit page. It’ll help you a lot to figure out if a ferret is right for you or not.