The touching story of Polly Pocket

The touching story of Polly Pocket

Polly Pocket (named by us due to her tiny size) arrived at Happy Quills in February 2025. Sadly, she was severely underweight and was suffering from an advanced case of gingivitis as well as an oral tumour. Despite this, she was friendly and clearly had a lot of life left in her. The vet claimed that with oral tumours it is often kinder to put hedgehogs to sleep as it is a well-known type of recurring cancer but because Polly was so full of life, he wanted to do everything he could to help her.

Polly started on a course of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories with all of her food mushed into a soup until she was strong enough to go under anaesthetic and have her tumour examined. It was confirmed to be cancerous but they removed what they could to give her as much time as possible and she was on the road to recovery.

By April, we began her move to a foster carer who could facilitate keeping her as a permanent foster. She stopped off with one of the team along the way and we never could have predicted what would happen in the space of a few short days.

Her foster carer checked on her one night to find a large mass coming from her private area which continued to get larger as she pushed it out - if she hadn't been with us for longer than the gestation period of a hedgehog then she could have been forgiven for thinking it was a hoglet. Polly pushed out a tumour weighing around 50g and didn't even make a squeak. She allowed the vet to examine her and remove the tumour externally then continued to run around in her vivarium that evening.

Polly is our super-hog, our whole team is in awe of her and we are so pleased to be able to tell her story. We hope we have a long time left with her yet because after everything she has endured, she is one of the sweetest hedgehogs we have ever had the pleasure of meeting.

You can support Polly and our other permanent fosters through our sponsorship scheme which funds vital vet bills and their ongoing care: https://www.happyquillsrescueandrehoming.co.uk/permanent-fosters/

You can contact Happy Quills via email or through our social media channels provided on the Linktree below as well as keep up to date on all the hedgehogs and tenrecs we help through the support of our amazing volunteers!
https://linktr.ee/happyquills?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=3211392a-a1c9-4bd8-9544-4b06ec4b84b5
https://www.happyquillsrescueandrehoming.co.uk