I never wanted a hamster. My eight-year-old daughter, Lily, on the other hand, had folders. Habitat drawings and wheel specifications – a case for ownership of such rigour it bowled me over. As a boy I’d had a hamster, Jerry, and remembered him as fine – but nothing more than that. So I went to a Cardiff pet shop on a cold January morning in 2021 with no plan whatsoever to fall in love.
At the back of the enclosure was a scruffy one nobody else wanted. Skinny. A bit unkempt. When the staff member lifted him out, he yawned and looked at Lily as if he’d been expecting her. She named him Popcorn Sushi and took him home in a pink carrier.
He turned out to be unlike any animal I’d been around – he was nonchalantly, effortlessly relaxed. He ground his teeth when he was happy. He’d lick our fingers when we petted him. He never once acted afraid of anything.
Lily called herself his “manager”. She made me a laminated rota that covered vegetables, fresh water and bedding top-ups. He was a proper little foodie – banana, broccoli, apple and, improbably, chicken – stuffing his cheeks with up to a third of his body weight and carrying off his treasures to be consumed later.
He divided his sand bath into two strict zones, toilet at one end, shower at the other. Nobody taught him this – he simply decided. Lily designed him a haunted house one Halloween, complete with a graveyard food station. Every evening at seven he’d settle at the same end of the sofa.
When we first got him, I was acting as though I was fine for my daughter while undiagnosed inattentive attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, and a 30-year struggle with my stammer quietly took everything apart. One evening, I lifted Popcorn out of his enclosure and he settled into my armpit and went to sleep. After that it became a ritual: him on my chest, me forced into a stillness my racing brain had never managed in its 40 years of trying. I’d tried CBT, mindfulness – my brain spent those sessions wondering what was for dinner. Popcorn made it automatic. You cannot spiral while a sleeping hamster is breathing on your chest.
I filmed our evenings with Popcorn to send to family and posted them online, and the videos went viral. Lily and I co-wrote a children’s book, Popcorn: The Unlikeliest of Friends, and I’ve also written a memoir, What Popcorn Knew.
Then one night, someone called Carrie left a comment on one of my TikTok posts about Popcorn. We started chatting and made plans to meet up. On 29 December 2025, I married her.
Popcorn died in the summer of 2023, after two and a half years. We buried him in the garden. We were devastated. I’ll never forget those moments of calm I found with him lying on my chest, which finally led me to seek an ADHD diagnosis. This scruffy hamster gave me my voice. Without Popcorn I never would have met the love of my life – I owe him so much.
