Hubert hates the cold

Hubert or Hubet as my Jersey City Mother-in-law calls him (Are all JC inhabitants descended from Bostonians?), is acting like a duck out of water when it comes to the cold. He has refused to poop outside in the back yard. Instead, he has opted to use my work area. He dutifully uses the newspapers that I lay out for him and always goes within 30 minutes of being fed.

At one point, early in the Fall, I took out his rug "bed" to clean it. When I replaced it, he refused to use it and moved out of the little cozy cubicle that we had in the basement. This meant that we would have to find a way to keep his blubber warm. We have a heater going but kind-hearted family members (all of us) have taken to keeping him covered being as he is incapable of covering himself--much as he tries. He loves his Jets polyester blanket placed so as to cover him from head to toe leaving only his snout exposed (God forbid he should miss detecting the presence of a meal). Often, we'll see him arranging his bedding. It almost looks like he was creating a mud hole for himself out of ripped apart bedding (he tries to move the fabric while stepping on it; after all, he doesn't have any problem when he tries to rearrange mud ;).

He still loves to have his belly stroked/scratched and immediately lays down in order to accommodate me. He still doesn't grunt much except for extreme displeasure. Now, I can hug him without it sounding like he was having his throat slashed. My oldest son is in the habit of creating impromptu family surveys and others have taken to creating these. Ben created one: "If you can transform a family pet into a human that you could chill with, whom would it be? The hands down favorite was Hubet possibly because he seems so lonely chilling by himself all the time even though, apart from food and belly scratches, I don't think he has much need for human companionship. Proximity is something else; if we locked him out, I think he would break down the door just to get inside the basement.

Feeding him by hand would be fearful to the uninitiated because he's often so voracious; but like a dog, he knows to be totally gentle with the hand that feeds him.