1 Good choice!

2 I confess to having no clue as to what this is so I Goggled it. Both results were this post! S I still don't have a clue!

3 Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Her cute animal sidekick is a ferret named Yuuno. Or at least that's how it seems to be when the series starts.

4

by the way: Yuuno is a shape-changer. His true form is a cute boy about Nanoha's age. She find that out in ep 7 (or 8?), and her reaction is priceless, in part because he's been sleeping in her bedroom in a basket on her desk and she's been changing her clothes in front of him. Not to mention taking him into the girls-side dressing room at an onsen.

It's something of a trope in mahou shoujo (magical girl) shows that there should be a cute talking animal sidekick for the magical girl, who gives the girl a magical gem that she needs in order to become a magical girl. It's not universal but it's quite common. This series uses the trope, and then subverts it. Yuuno does give Raising Heart to Nanoha, but Raising Heart is a product of high tech and doesn't really fit the mold. (For one thing, sometimes she argues with Nanoha. In fact, she can be very stubborn.)

But this show does a lot of that. The first few episodes of the series make it seem like a rip-off of Card Captor Sakura. Then when Chrono shows up, everything changes (and IMHO improves) and it strikes off on an entirely new path.

In A's, the sequel, Yuuno only uses his ferret form briefly, in the last half of episode 3.

5 Not that much of a spoiler.

At the start of the first episode, you see his real form, and then he transforms into a ferret.

6 I saw the show name late last night, and was too tired to bother googling it.  Sometime around lap 30 of today's race, I finally figured out what you were talking about.

At which point, I choked on my soda.  Nicely done!