i am sad

i lost two friends this week. i never met them but feel like i knew them through stories and pictures.

can you be friends with someone you've never met?

i've been thinking about this. i guess it depends on what you mean by 'friends'. according to the big fat dictionary cindy uses, a friend is someone 'with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.' i guess mr oxford would say that we were friends.

friends are hard for me to find: i don't get out much. i stay at home a lot. and cindy says i am melodramatic and i don't know what that means but i think it makes it hard for me to make friends. so if i accidentally stumble upon someone who makes me laugh or cry or wonder how the world can be so awesome and unfair at the same time, i consider them a friend. i look forward to hearing what they think and how they feel and what makes them mad and sad and glad. i like to share stories from my life and feel understood. i want to care about someone and have them care about me. i like getting to know others and their lives and hopes and fears and what makes them different from everyone else. i like to make others laugh and want them to be happier because i was there; even if it was only for a couple minutes. i may never speak some of these things out loud but that doesn't make them any less true or hearfelt. words i say are gone in a second but words i write could be there forever, maybe that makes them more true and heartfelt?

can you really lose someone you've never met?

there was no place to look to find the 'real' answer. i just know they mattered to me and i cared about them and now i am sad because they're gone. so...'yes'.

my human is so cute!

i haven't really had much time to be a 'blog hog' lately...we've been busy. cindy's family visited...there were so many of them, including two smaller-size humans who were curious about me and wanted to touch me but they wouldn't sit still for more than two seconds so they scared me and i huffed and they jumped then i jumped and on it went. and they smell different.

the weather is changing here. i can't really see much from inside but it 'feels' different. cindy has been taking me with her when she does the laundry and gets the mail. it's my first visit to Outside. it's cold there. cindy keeps me smothered in fleece but i can still feel the cold. it smells sooooooo good, tho'. when we get to the laundry room, i get to wander around inside the big basket and give that world a sniff, too. it doesn't smell as good as Outside but it still makes my nose twitchy and excited.

every time i go to sleep and wake up, there's a new rock in my home. honestly, where do all these rocks come from? pretty soon i won't be able to turn around without bumping into a rock. it's like living in a quarry. the good thing is more rocks mean more crickets and that means more crunchy goodness. cindy still thinks she is stumping me with her pathetic cricket-hiding ability. she's not. but i try not to make it too obvious and save a couple crickets for after she goes to sleep.

i noticed something funny the last couple days: if cindy is upset she takes it out on me. she constantly comes over and picks me up just long enough to hold me, then she puts me back down. and she has been spending way too much time with me - i spend so much time on her stomach, i feel like she's attached to me. if i have to listen to one more episode of 'Mad Men' i think i will take up smoking. i think all of this extra attention has something to do with other hedgehogs and their humans and someone being sick. i'm not sure what that means - i just know i want to be left in peace.

i have to say as annoying as cindy is, she feeds me well. i still LOVE my new diet: smelly, mushy stuff and crackly, crunchy stuff all mixed in. it's too bad there's vegetables mixed in but ever since i ate around them one time, she cuts them up so small, some always get in my mouth. still, it's nice having something different every day or two. and there is always bananas! i love the creamy, sugary goodness of bananas...mmmmm... and i have my human so well trained: when she gets up, she always comes by home to see me so i make sure i am standing beside my dish and staring at it, looking hungry. that always gets me extra bananas.

isn't that cute?

hedgehog poetry

i'm not really into poetry but i really like this one:

He ambles along like a walking pincushion,
Stops and curls up like a chestnut burr.
He's not worried because he's so little.
Nobody is going to slap him around.

it was written by a ninth-century chinese poet, Chu Chen Pu. he was writing about one of me!!!

the ninth century...wow...that was like even before cindy was born.

a few of my favorite things

some seem to think all hedgehogs do is eat, poop and sleep. that is pretty much it, i suppose, but we do notice things and enjoy some things more than others. 

i love the smell of 'outside'...cindy puts me close to the screen in the kitchen so i can get a whiff and it smells wonderful! i have never been to this 'outside' place and she only holds me there for a few seconds - i'm guessing cuz it's kinda cool out 'there'. i hope i can visit it more sometime.

i love weekend naps...as soon as i am done wheeling, cindy scoops me up and puts me on a gigantic heating pad called 'jamie'. i sleep with there for a loooong time, usually tucked in somewhere, it's so warm and cozy. i don't even mind the strange noises that come out of his mouth and some are kinda loud and scary! cindy says we snore at each other.

i sleep in cindy's shirt, too...she pulls up the bottom to make me a pocket and she's so warm but she moves so much!! jeez. jamie is like a warm rock...napping with cindy is like sleeping in a canoe!

i love the crunch of beetles and crickets. i love it. anything that makes that noise when you bite down on it has to be good! mealworms are good, too, such a creamy inside but they just don't have that satsifying crunch when you chomp down on them. no ooze.

i love that every day i wake up to something different: cindy moves stuff around and hides food in weird spots (grossly under-estimating my hunting skills). this week she added some rocks. last week it was plants. makes me wonder what will happen next. the first thing i do when i wake up is take a tour of my home to see what's new...then i go back to sleep. it's never that exciting.

i love the 'cowboy dinner' catfood cindy gave me. once. she says it's too rich for me and it did make me barf once but i think that was because i ate it all at once and couldn't stop because it was soooo good. now she ruins it by mixing it with stuff like vegetables and that dry, sawdusty Sunseed (blech!) and boring chicken so now, if i want the yummy goodness of 'cowboy dinner', i have to eat all the healthy stuff too. i still like it but not as much as i did before.

i love my food dish, too. i can sit on the side and hang my bum out and relax while i am eating. it is so much better than having to stick my chin up all the time.

my water dish is great, too - no silly metal pokey thing hanging up so high i strained my neck every time i had a drink. and i always cut my tongue on the thingy. cindy watched me try to get a drink out of it once and it disappeared the next day. instead, there was a shiny green dish in its place - much better.

and i loooooooves my fleece....cindy makes me little bags out of fleece to hide and sleep in.  it's so warm and cozy. i like nice clean corners, tho', so i won't sleep in them until cindy gets rid of the little bit of extra fleece that sticks out when you sew it. i need to be able to get my nose right into the deepest corner. how can i do that if there's a bunch of fleece stuffed in there? i prefer my bags finished with a blind stitch.

see? i don't spend all of my time pooping and sleeping. i check things out. i think about stuff.

how i see things

this is where i live...it's a cage. a nice cage, i guess, as cages go. but it is still a cage.

note the built in 'hedgie-ladder' and lack of a cover. cindy is convinced i am going to be AWOL  one morning...but where would i go? the humans have secured the place like fort knox...no nooks...not a cranny... what would be the point? and most importantly, how would i get crickets?

and this is the view from my cage:

that first pic is where i see cindy most. she spends a LOT of time in there!!! i didn't know she had legs for the first month! the second pic shows the big freakish fish house. i'm glad they're way over there! and this one is where my humans watch Monk:

i guess some of my friends in the wild might say i'm a sell-out cuz i am enjoying my life in a cage but i think i've got it pretty good. my  food is delivered to me so i don't have to spend all night trying to catch it. cindy's so cute - she even 'hides' crickets so i have to hunt for them! i play along and pretend i can't smell exactly where they are. i always have a warm place to sleep and cindy insists on keeping me and my home clean.  very annoying.  my home is safe from predators and there's always a human around if i run into trouble (like the time i tipped over my food dish when i was trying to move it and all of my beloved banana was trapped under it. that was awful!). not having to worry about food and shelter frees up a lot of time so i can spend more time doing what i really love: napping.

things i think about when cindy isn't bugging me

i am the Monk of the hedgie world.


if you're not familiar with Monk, he's the star of a tv series of the same name that ran a few years ago. adrian monk is a former police detective who, in addition to having OCD and being socially inept, has phobias about everything. my humans discovered Monk on netflix and have been watching it lately. as my home is close to the tv, i have been 'watching' it...or at least listening to it...as well.


i can relate to him. painfully. although my fears aren't as numerous (i don't get out that much) they are certainly as debilitating: they are paralyzing. when i am scared, i cannot think, respond or react except to bury my head and huff a blue streak. most of my fear centres around sudden movements or shadows or sounds. some would say this makes sense: i am considered 'prey' in some circles, after all. but even to me my fear seems overly-dramatic: i huff-pop-jump at everything, then bury my head. if cindy would relent and let me have sand, my head would be buried in it. i know this goes well beyond survival instinct: there's nothing trying to eat me around here. (even the huge fish live in a tank they can't possibly get out of and why would they? my humans are their slaves! all the fish do is eat and poop.) granted, the sight of those jaw-like nail clippers would make anyone want to poop on the spot but is my reaction not a touch melodramatic?

i am Monk. and i don't know why.