I had my monthly doctor appointment on Monday, and they checked my weight and blood pressure as usual. The nurse read the blood pressure numbers back to me: “98 over 68.”

She paused.

“Is that normal for you?”

And the tone in her voice suggested that these numbers were anything but normal. But perhaps I was some sort of alien life form that could survive with that type of blood pressure. I searched my brain, trying to remember my past readings and wondering just what was wrong with the current reading. Was I dying?

“Um, I think my numbers are usually pretty low?” It was more a question than a statement.

She glanced at my chart and nodded. I hopped online when I got home to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently my blood pressure falls in line with that of a professional athlete or a child. I prefer to think of myself as a professional athlete.

Winston rarely gives us the gift of sleeping through the night. He usually wakes me at 6 a.m. by pawing at me, biting me or jumping onto my head (I wish I were joking about that). That might be a fine alarm clock for some, but given that I go to bed between 1 and 2 a.m., he’s getting me up in the middle of the night.

When he does sleep late, it’s usually because I’ve left some article of clothing on the floor by the bed that he can curl up on. This was the case a couple nights ago. When I woke in the morning, he was still curled on my sweatshirt, perfectly quiet. What joy! He had allowed me to sleep through the night.

I started sneezing as I seem to do every morning lately because of allergies. I had already had a sneezing fit in the middle of the night, and in my fumbling for the tissue box on the nightstand, the book that was sitting there had been pushed to a precarious spot at the edge of the nightstand. In the morning, when I reached out to grab a tissue, my coordination was a little off and I knocked into the book. It dropped onto sound-asleep Winston. And maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad had this not been a hefty hard-back book that weighs several pounds. By cat standards, I dropped a literary boulder onto him. He bolted out of the room.

I’m feeling guilty, and also pretty certain that Winston isn’t going to sleep through the night again for a very long time. It’s hard to blame him now for jumping on my head.

On Tuesday morning, I let Abe out into the yard and he barked incessantly. Abe usually barks if there are people or dogs walking by, so I figured someone was out for a morning stroll. I coaxed him back into the house with a treat.

I was away for a couple hours, and when I returned, I let Abe out again. And the barking started again, endless barking. I finally walked onto the back porch to see what was going on. Abe was directing his verbal attack at the ground, and when I looked, I saw a shell. A turtle shell? That couldn’t be right. I walked out into the yard to investigate, and this poor turtle, no doubt scared to death, sat with his head pulled nearly all the way into his shell.

I grabbed Abe by the collar and dragged him into the house. He was furious with me. Couldn’t I see that there was an intruder? Nothing that he could recognize, but anything with that tank-like armor must be a threat.

I went back out to check on the turtle, who was already high-tailing it to the cover of our bushes. And he was speedy. I don’t know how turtles have gotten stereotyped as slow creatures because he was faster than the average opossum or armadillo.

This was mystifying. We have a hideous six-foot privacy fence (required by our homeowners association) that keeps out almost all wildlife. I looked for gaps under the fence, and they only one I could spot was on the opposite side of the yard. We do have a pond in our neighborhood, but had the turtle really traveled that far from home? What if he couldn’t find his way out?

Greg and I have talked before about making our backyard a certified wildlife habitat but were never willing to commit to such a big project. And now, here we were, completely unprepared for our first guest. We didn’t have the required water source or the berry- and seed-producing plants. It seemed not completely unlikely that this turtle would die in our unfriendly backyard.

I called Greg. He must have thought I had lost my mind, calling him at work to ask how long turtles could be away from water. We discussed trying to move the turtle back to the pond, but we weren’t sure that was its normal home. I decided to leave a dish of water in the yard just in case.

I spent much of Tuesday afternoon following the movements of the turtle. He was amazingly active, his little legs propelling him over the tall turf in our yard, from the shade of the tree to the sun on the south side. Yesterday morning, we looked out to see him marching across the lawn once again. Still alive. Still stuck in our yard.

I think he might have left because I haven’t seen him today. And I hope that he did and that he makes it to a wetter destination. But I do worry. As far as I can tell, the only way out was to sneak under that gap in the fence, that gap that leads directly into our neighbor’s yard.