Mister Huggles

When I do my school work, he is sitting on a chair next to me. When I lay on the couch, he pokes my belly and asks me to make some room for him. If I sit there, he does his leaning thing, like some people put their elbow out from the window when they are driving a car. He wants a lot of hugs but when he is really in need he turns his ears on huggle-position. Yes, it’s a thing.

Sometimes he runs in his sleep, barks, makes eating sounds and few times this heart-breaking scream when you must go and wake him up from the bad dream. I think in those dreams his family is hurting or leaving him somewhere. When he sleeps for a long time, his ears start smelling like honey. He loves to sleep in the sun spots.

He is annoying. He might wake everyone up by whining and walking around the bed, jumping against it. And when everyone is up, he will go back to sleep. He doesn’t want to go out when it rains. During the rainy days he seems to be very sleepy and have a giant bladder. You have to carry him out. If you buy him a toy he rips it apart in less than 30 seconds. He has an endless belly for treats and by treats, I mean any food. You name it.

When our daughter was born, we were a bit scared how he is going to react since he has always been the baby in the family, for 10 years before @smallsteps was born. We brought our daughter home from the hospital and put her on top of the bed first to see what he would do. He was sniffing around her stuff, then jumped against the bed and his face told us “Okay, that kind of a thing is part of the family now. Roger that.”

It has surprised me how patient and kind he can be. We are doing our best to teach our daughter how to handle animals, but she is only two so sometimes she forgets or wants to test her limits. She has pulled his beard and tail, annoyed him by following him, putting clothes on him, opening his mouth and putting food in there (okay, this one he probably doesn’t mind), and stolen all his dear toys but making sure that none of her toys are his. And he just looks at her, gives a tiny lick or moves away.

I held him for the first time when he was only 3 weeks old and wrapped a towel around him when he was 7 weeks and took him home. He was very scared but calmed down when he was on my chest, hearing my heart beat. I carried him under my jacket when it was cold and held his paws so that they would stay warm. He travelled with me from my study city to my home city by train almost every weekend in his travel box. Now when I take the box out from the closet, he runs straight in there making sure he is coming with where ever we are going.

He is getting old and grey. He sleeps more than before and the teeth are bad. At times he forgets where he is going, like in the middle of the night he sometimes walks out from the bedroom and then just stops next to the door. Those times I will go and get him back and you can see that he is confused. I know that we don’t have too much time left together and I’m trying to save a memory of all those things I’ve mentioned in this post. I smell his honey ears, give him a small treats now and then, though his stomach can’t handle too much anymore and then hugs. Lots and lots of hugs for our dear Mister Huggles, the soul, heart and tail of our family.