Alright so, pretty weird story:

My cat was stalking a lizard outside for god knows how long. When I came upon them this little guy was attempting to scramble underneath an outdoor chair cushion laying on the concrete.

My cat is getting really good at catching things and not damaging them. If she doesn't damage them she gets to mess with them longer. Normally, when she's finally crushed the spirit of an animal's will to live she'll bring it to me and yowl. I'll turn around and something will be their, deathly afraid to even move, but I digress.

Usually when this happens with lizards I'll just pick it up and coax it into a nearby bush for shelter. This guy wasn't having any of that, so I hung out with him in the backyard for 15 minutes to give him time to chill out. After I was ready to go inside I tried to pick him up again and he freaked out and ran across my whole body; jumped off my shoulder and disappeared.

Two hours later I'm sitting at my computer chair, and I feel a huge spider on my neck. I flip out, flailing at it because I can't see. It wasn't a spider at all! This dude was on my back the whole time and I didn't even know it. I put him under a bush in the front yard where I put all my other cat's victims. They normally will be gone the next day.

The next day I'm watering the plants and I flush him out; still in the same spot. I go to pick him up and he runs from me a couple times... but only a few inches away, which I have never experienced with a wild lizard. I remember catching them all the time as a kid.

Anyway, now this thing never wants to be put down. It would live in my pocket if I let it. When I try to remove him from my person it struggles as hard as it can to hunker down.

So I guess I have a lizard now?

I've never had a reptile like me, so it's pretty weird. He hasn't eaten in like 4 days (at least) which is obviously pretty bad, but yesterday and the day before he was shedding and I read that they sometimes fast during that time.

I think he is way too stressed out to eat anything. They like to burrow and he just hides under the tanbark I put in this makeshift terrarium.

Yesterday I tried putting the terrarium outside several times with it open so he could leave, but again, he just hunkers down. Today I'm using a heating pad as a heat source, but I'm sure this is bad as well because it incentivizes him to stay burrowed at the bottom. I'm also worried that I'm raising his metabolism by raising his body temperature, so he'll die faster from starvation.

• I need a bigger terrarium.
• I need a top-down heat source.
• I need full spectrum lighting (or that get some messed up calcium deficiency bone disease)

I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice here. It's a common Blue Belly (Western Fence) lizard. He is not even close to full grown. Three inches long and very pretty small. This makes me even more wary because I figure he probably needs to eat a big more to grow.

Even the small crickets at the store seem gigantic compared to him.... I'm not sure if he could eat one... maybe. But then if he doesn't eat it I'm left wondering if it's too big or if he's just too stressed out to hunt. I dug up a few tiny worms in my backyard... no dice. One even wriggled between his "claws" and he just sat their frozen because I had just put him in the cage. I probably need to stop changing his environment so drastically on a daily basis.

At this point I'm kind of committed to keeping him. I was thinking I would just rehab him and throw him back to the 'wilds'. There is a creek behind my house that spawns all kinds of life. Honestly though, I might feel bad about potentially domesticating an animal and then leaving it to die. Not really sure how that works.

Eh, whatever... It's just a lizard. It is a pretty odd situation to be in though.

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