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.

it's a hog's life

i must admit my life is pretty good. most of you probably think you know me from whatever cindy balbs about on HHC but she exaggerates: no one is that grumpy or sleeps that much. please.


cindy is absolutely obsessed with my diet so i actually eat better than my humans do. i had ground beef last night, with vegetables and some sort of mushy smelly wonderful stuff from a can....mmmm....it's funny: that's my fave yet cindy gags when she puts it in my bowl. weirdo. and she finally bought bananas!! about time. i could smell them (i think she cooked them??!!) but i have been waiting and waiting...i ate my little face off last night.


i get a lot of awesome insects, too. cindy always leaves them for me to find after the sun goes out. she thinks she's smart but really, you'd have to be a sepcial kind of stupid to not be able to find a cricket, right? i love the crunch of crickets but love the creaminess of mealies...they are both my favorites.


cindy is also fanatical about my cage being clean. verrrrry annoying. she's always picking up poop or scrubbing something with that smelly spray (it reminds me of pickles). i spend all night making my cage a home and she comes a long...every morning...and wrecks it. and the better my sleeping bag smells, the more cindy wants to remove it. she does it all the time - she picks me up and makes a face and suddenly i am in a new bag: no poop, no smell - how do i even know it's really mine??


and she's always rearranging everything...the lastest is fake plants and she's been threatening to add some slate rocks - something about trimming my nails. (heh heh...it's been six months and i still won't let her touch my feet. contrary to popular belief, you can curl up in water...heh heh). i go to sleep in one spot, settled perfectly in my perfectly arranged cage and i wake up 16 hours later and everything is different: there's no poop...there are now plants and rocks...i keep walking into stuff. sheesh.


but still...i guess i've got it pretty good. it's always the same toasty temperature...i can hear a click just before the sun rises/sets every day (a little spooky, actually) and it's always at the exact. same. time. weird...i have not one but two wheels and both are pretty sweet. i like the slanty one more cuz my poop and pee fly everywhere when i get the wheel rockin' - it's awesome to watch!!


cindy, i call her the chief human, is obviously the one in charge of my life.  she gets to do all the fun stuff like cooking and cleaning. she also makes me take baths on days when my cage is really messy. i always know when i'm going to get a bath by the way she says good morning to me: if she swears, it's bath day. <sigh> i HATE bath days. jamie is second-in-command but all he does is let me sleep on him. he's a great heating pad.


i can't really ask for anything more. i always feel safe and cared for and, besides my human's annoying habits of cleaning and constantly trying to engage me in conversation, i don't have any major complaints. i guess you could say it's a hog's life.

a little about me

i am a hedgehog.


i am covered in prickly little quills that can do some major damage if i am scared.


i scare very easily.


these two things can make me very hard to love. which is too bad cuz once you get to know me, i can be quite lovable. but you have to get past the pokes. that's why i secretly love cindy (one of my humans). i have hissed, spit, huffed and poked at her...i have tried to bite her for no good reason (she was just trying to help)...when she talks to me i huff...when she tries to touch me i jump...i have made her bleed many times and have given her a nasty rash.


she still loves me.


there's a lesson here, i'm sure.