Newt and the Loft

Sometimes Newt gets energized and has the animalistic urge to go somewhere. So she scampers around the house. Her favorite spot to go is up in the loft across the rafters into the small storage loft above my parents’ room. There are a couple of problems with this. Number one, there is no ladder leading to the loft there and we cannot reach her. Number two, if we can't reach her then she can't get her lunch, and if she can't get lunch at lunchtime, there will be no lunch for her when she does come down—in the Wild house there are no leftovers. Number three, if she is up in the loft she will be the one deciding when to come down and that will only be when she has to relieve herself, and she won't wait until we get her to the cage.

I thought I easily fixed the problem by tacking up a piece of plywood below the second rung on the ladder going up into our big loft. Newt sat there in front of the ladder pondering for minutes about how to get up the ladder, and finally out of frustration she went in to our room and took a long nap. I thought I had solved the problem, but a few days later she was on a rafter looking down at us during school time. She figured out how to get past the plywood by climbing up the side of the ladder! Now anytime we hear her scampering across the floor we have to get up and go get her settled again.

Only on special occasions do we let her up in the loft. I think she likes to go up in the loft because it gets very warm up there and it's her instinct to get to high places. Thankfully she is most always content to just lay on her back and sleep the whole day.