tousle

With an open smile, he reached out and tousled the children’s heads till they too were cheerful again.

“The Incorrigibles have very strikingly colored hair,” she said thoughtfully, gazing down at the three tousled heads.

“She has expensive taste,” Nelson laughed, kneeling down to tousle Sadie’s fur.

Hine’s tousled little boy, who looks forlornly into the camera with scowling dark eyes beneath a furrowed brow, likely had no such liberating choice.

"You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you’re thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws."