In the interest of thorough product research, I have been taking Nugget on the road for years. This was not always intentional. Sometimes it just happened that Nugget needed to come, and hotels needed to be involved, and Nugget had opinions. Many opinions. Loudly held opinions, expressed through strategic positioning on the bed before I even had a chance to try it.

What follows is his completely unbiased review of the hotel bed situation in America, as interpreted by me, his mother, who feeds him home-cooked meals with a fork and has zero perspective on how ridiculous any of this is.

What Nugget Looks For in a Hotel Bed

• Surface area. He requires at least 70% of any sleeping surface. This is non-negotiable and he will achieve it regardless of starting position.
• Pillow accessibility. He prefers to rest his head on at least one pillow that was originally placed for a human. Points deducted if the pillows are too firm for his specific chin angle.
• Blanket situation. Heavy enough to burrow partially under, light enough that he can kick it off dramatically at 3am without waking me up. He will wake me up anyway.
• The smell. Hotels that use heavily fragranced laundry products get lower marks. He has a sensitive nose and strong feelings about lavender.
• Structural integrity. The bed must not make noise when he repositions every forty-five minutes, which is always.

His Best Stay (His Words)

There was a stay at a pet-friendly boutique hotel where the bed had a particularly good pillow situation — soft top, supportive beneath, the kind of thing that holds its shape under repeated 80-pound impact testing. Nugget was on it within approximately eleven seconds of entering the room. He did not move for six hours. This is his highest rating: the Immediate and Total Commitment.

His Most Critical Review

One property had pillows that were, in Nugget's professional assessment, basically decorative. Flat. Non-committal. The kind of pillow that has given up on itself. He circled the bed three times, looked at me with an expression that can only be described as disappointment, and then got on it anyway because he is ultimately an optimist and also there was nowhere else to sleep.

What Nugget Teaches Us About Sleep

He approaches every bed with total commitment and zero self-consciousness. He adjusts until he's comfortable without apologizing for it. He doesn't lie awake worrying — he is asleep within minutes, every time, completely unbothered by whatever chaos preceded bedtime. He has, genuinely, the best sleep habits of anyone in our household. I'm taking notes.

Also the pillow thing. The pillow thing is real and Nugget knows it and you should listen to him.