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Neville adapts to his situation
Wednesday, August 12 2026
During the night, Neville repeatedly woke me up to ask for some unknown need to be met. Usually it was that he needed to piss, but sometimes it wasn't. I responded to his whining at one point by lifting him up to the couch so he could sleep at my feet, and that contented him for a couple hours, suggesting that he occassionally whines just because he wants to snuggle.
Chaya, the woman who comes every month to clean our house, was coming this morning at 9:00am, and I had to dismantle Neville's pen and corral him in the laboratory before she arrived so she could clean the living room and Neville wouldn't get too excited by her arrival. (I also had to tidy up the kitchen, as we don't want her spending time cleaning up things that we normally clean ourselves.) As I was doing these things, I also took a recreational 150mg dose of pseudoephedrine.
I corralled Neville in the laboratory while I took Charlotte for her morning walk, which was up the Farm Road and then back homeward atop the escarpment to its the west. As I climbed that escarpment, I found a beautiful turkey wing feather. And on the trail back northward, I came upon the first box turtle I'd seen in years. I held the little guy up to Charlotte to see what she would think (he was safely tucked inside) and she seemed a little leery of him.
Back at the house, I spent the next couple hours with Neville in the laboratory. Periodically he would whine about one of his handful of needs. So I would carry him down the stairs and outside and plunk him down in the grass. The first time I did this, that seemed to be where he wanted to remain, and after doing one of his prolonged urinations, he lay down in the grass and began to sun himself. So I took the opportunity to do some much-needed weeding of the garden, where a tall species of grass has mounted a hostile takeover.
I carried Neville out for another piss break as Chaya was leaving, and this time he seemed to want to sun himself in the driveway. But then he started lowly walking to the end of the driveway, and when he reached that, he continued into Dug Hill Road as if he was going to cross it. There was to be none of that, so I picked him up and carried him back inside. Then I rebuilt his corral and set him up in there while I recharged my hydronic hot water system with a more antifreeze and water, something I haven't had to do for since way back in the spring or perhaps earlier (an unusually long time).
Confident that Neville was going to be as needy as he had been last night and this morning, I spent the next several hours on the couch inside his corral, where it forms one of its sides. (This allows Charlotte to come and go as she pleases, since, unlike Neville, she is agile enough to easily leap over the arm or back of the couch.) But Neville settled into a nap that lasted most of that time. Occasionally he could be heard snorting. Charlotte was also napping. I remained with them just in case Neville woke up and started whining, but he remained that way until Gretchen returned from her shift at the bookstore. If he handles his confinement like that for the next three months, particularly if drinking and urination decrease, it might not be as bad as I'd feared.
For dinner, I made my usual Wednesday evening spaghetti, this time with a pan of sautéd tempeh and onions. The spaghetti itself was made from two partial boxes from two different brands (Barilla and De Cecco), and I cooked it with broccoli. As I was doing this, I listened to the audio portion of a YouTube video about stacking dry stone walls, and what was interesting about it was hearing the technical terms for concepts that I had stumbled upon on my own over the course of many years of working with stone. One of these was the concept of "pinning" a stone, that is, using a small rock to keep a larger rock from rocking back and forth. I'd discovered pinning when making cairns, as it is impossible to stack rocks very high without ensuring that each rock in the pile does not move.
Later this evening, I took a bath so as to wash away the sweat grime and sooth my many mosquito bites.
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