About 8 years ago, Cocoa got sick. We told her if she got better, we’d get her a manatee (she had shown interest in ones on tv). Her illness led to a feeding tube and when she had surgery to put it in, we got a small plush manatee to keep her company. Honestly, she didn’t care much about that manatee, but to us, that was HER manatee. She ultimately recovered like a champ and continued to not really care about “her” manatee.

When she got sick with vestibular syndrome at the end of December (2016), we pulled the manatee out of the toy pile to give her company once again (honestly more for us than her, I’m sure). She was showing great signs of recovery but sadly, the experience was too much for her heart and she passed away of congestive heart failure. She was 13 years old and had been our kitty for just over a decade.

She was a truly awesome kitty. She loved pick-ups and hugs (seriously, she gave great, grabbing, purring hugs with head rubs), purring in ears and smelling eyes (extreme close up!) and naptime cuddles. She gave great nap spoons.

There’s a really big empty space in our lives now. So I want to make a giant, nap-able manatee in her honor. It won’t bring her back and probably won’t make things better, but at least I will have something to hug now that I can’t hug her.

Pattern Notes:
Used 15mm safety eyes.

Used a variety of things for stuffing. Put about 2 cups of pellets into some pantyhose, then put that in a 1 gallon paint strainer bag stuffed with fiberfill. Then put that in a 5 gallon paint strainer bag also stuffed with fiberfill. It worked out really well - the pellets give it weight and make the center densely squishy and the layers of fiberfill seem to be smoother and less lumpy than when I tried to stuff the entire body with fiberfill with no layers. And the paint strainer bags should keep any fibers from working their way out of the manatee. The end result is soft, squishy, a bit weighted and combined with the size, REALLY reminds me and the husband of hugging a Cocoa.

A smaller needle would have been good but this yarn was a bit resistant to tighter gauge for me since it is so fuzzy, particularly when working increases. I actually tried a US6, US8 and US9 before using the US10 and the kfb was hard to work in everything but the US10. Retrospectively, I would have tried harder to make the US8 work, or at least the US9.

Moved the beginning of the round to the end of the needle for the tail. Makes the tail look like the pictures.

Attempted the embroidery but the yarn is so fuzzy, it eats anything smaller than it. Since I do not want to embroider huge, fuzzy nostrils and mouth just to make it show up, the manatee will remain nose- and mouth-less.

The manatee is wonderful and cuddly and hugging it has caused both the husband and I to tear up.