My dear hedgehog passed away unexpectedly..

He would have been 6 in a few months. He started slowing down a bit recently, and stopped eating hard food a few weeks ago. We were a little concerned about that, but we started blending food for him and mixing it with baby food so it would be softer and that seemed to work. In the last couple of days, he was up during the day and spent a lot of time walking around downstairs with his head in a tube, which was always his favorite thing to do... But last night when we took him back upstairs at bedtime, he was struggling to breathe.

We held him for a while as he gasped and called 10 different emergency vets to see if they could help, but few could treat hedgehogs, and the only one within an hour of us (at midnight) was not well reviewed. The one that we were told was best for exotics was 2 hours away in Athens at UGA.

In the end, I don't think any of them could have done anything for him, so we put him in his cage where he could drink some water and eat a little bit. We could hear him breathing and moving for a while so we hoped he'd be around this morning to take to our regular vet, but when I got up early this morning, he was gone.

My partner kept him in her office since we've lived in the new house and played with him a lot recently, but I regret not spending a little more time with him the last few months. I had planned to take some nice photos of him soon since I knew he was getting old, but I didn't, and now it's too late. Until last night, he seemed like he was mostly doing well, so I really thought we'd have him a while longer.

He was a wonderful hedgehog who has been with us across two states and four moves. Almost six years old is a pretty good run, but we're really going to miss him.