Minnie Moo vs a prickly hedgehog

What? There's a hedgehog in my friskie bowl

All this talk about Mr Hawk has got me thinking about my time at Kingsgate and the first time I got myself into a real prickly situation, I met a hedgehog.

For those of you who've never met one of these prickly balls with tiny legs and short wet noses (scratch that I mean snouts), they're exactly that, round and prickly. I've got to say though they're sneaky, despite the sticky up prickles they're super cute.

Anyway because I was spending more time outside M put an extra bowl of friskies on the porch for me.  

Naturally I thought this was a great idea. Now if I had a snack attack I wouldn't have to make the dodgy leap up through the bathroom window I could simply walk onto the porch to refuel at my outdoor friskie station! 

What I didn't anticipate was the unwritten law of nature that reads something along the lines of...

Any type of food left outside is communal for all creatures, big, small, 2, 4 legs, wings or not to dine "al fresco" (that's how Italian cats say outdoors). No invitation required.

Well late one warmish evening I was inside and heard this strange noise coming from outside near the porch. I'd never heard anything like it....snort, grunt, snort, snort, grunt, grunt, sniff, snort, grunt, wheeze. I thought "wow a little piglet must have fallen asleep outside on our porch and is snoring really loudly."  

Just in case we were in danger, I decided to go out, investigate and check everything was A-OK. Secretly I was thinking "if anyone's messing with my friskies, there's going to be trouble."

Luckily the big sliding door was open and I didn't have to master an Olympic gymnastics move to get out of the window before long I was on the porch. Well blow me down standing there almost knee-deep in my bowl was one spiky brown ball snorting away and hoovering up all of my friskies.  

I'd never seen anything like it before!

Feeling brave and just a tad curious I got up close and stretched my paw out to touch. Thinking that the spiky bits were well un-spiky, soft and bouncy yikes, no, ouch! Prickly! I felt like I had walked on millions of grass prickles!

M came outside to see what was going on. Imagine her surprise to see me hopping around me-oow-ing at the top of voice with a rolled up spiky ball inside my friskie bowl!

"So Minnie Moo I see you got a little too close to a Hedgehog! Bad timing! They only come out at night and as you've just felt are covered in prickly spines this is their way of protecting themselves. They love insects but cat and dog food is sometimes on the menu too!"

Rubbing my paw I thought well thanks for the nature lesson M but couldn't you have told me earlier? Anyway I gingerly took a few steps back and waited for "Young Spike" to uncurl and head on home. I couldn't believe that once he was back on his little feet he kept on eating...cheeky sod!

Eventually he slowly climbed out of the bowl and took tiny little steps back to the hedge all the while making those familiar but strange snorting noises. Ahhh the penny dropped inside my head, so that's why they're called hedgehogs!

The first thing that I did was go head-first into my bowl to reclaim my friskies.  I didn't even care that I was getting hedgehog germs!

Yours in friskies Minnie Moo

PS: Thanks for reading my tails (scratch that I mean blogs) feel free to share my life stories and you can follow me here www.minniemoothecat.blogspot.com Love MMx