August 25th, 2026

You see before you a picture of our living room. Well part of our living room.  It's a cozy space that exists between the kitchen/dining area and the family room.  Normally, there isn't a ton of furniture in this room, one small sofa, a coffee table which is, frankly, a little too big for the room, two swivel chairs and the display cabinet.  (also built-in bookcases topped out full of books but I don't count them becoz they are built in, as I said before). It's a perfectly sized room for reading, having a quiet phone call, a small group of friends talking etc.  It is, as I said before, cozy.

It's a room that we quite like but it turned out to feel just a wee bit perhaps more formal (?) than other rooms in our house, like say, the family room which is a kind of insane spot. (possibly more on that another time)  Since the living room is also a path that we walk to get back and forth from kitchen to family room and back again, it seemed logical and safer that simpler would be better, more streamlined, less "stuff".  And somehow, we decided at some point, that it would be a room with no kitty stuff. No toys, no trees, no beds, nothing that would junk it up.  Certainly sounds like a good idea, right?

Quite obviously, as you can clearly see in the photo, there is a kitty toy in that room.  A hammock. A kitty hammock.  Now why is it in the room that was never going to have kitty toy obstacles in it? That is an excellent question, I'm so glad you asked.

I've been doing some reading. (I hear you groaning)   Mostly because I am currently fresh out of kitty toy ideas that I can make.  There have been many over the years, some of them are still in  use, in fact.  But other creations either got used up, played to pieces, were always intended to be temporary, or turned out to not be great ideas to begin with.  And I could tell that the kittyboys were getting a little bored.  Well it seemed that way to me.  Which is why I was reading.

Was I imaging it?  Do cats get bored with the same old toys every day or was I projecting?  Turns out I was absolutely correct.  What is a good pet parent supposed to do other than go broke buying toys? (or making them)

Turns out, according to what I read, sometimes they don't actually need new toys.  Cats often consider an old toy placed in a new environment, a new toy.  Interesting!  So I spent some time considering moving things around.  Just as an experiment.  I decided to NOT move everything right away; just one thing, at first. Let's see what happens.

When the hammock first arrived a year or so ago, it was an instant hit.  There was a cat lounging on it before Tim had it completely constructed which did not help construction one single bit.  It lived in the family room in front of the TV where we could see the kittyboys and they could see us AND if they wanted to, they could also watch TV (sometimes they do). They played with the little dangling pompom, they fought over whose turn it was to lay on it.  They leapt over it while racing around the house. In short, it was very popular.  Right up until it wasn't.

Eventually it kind of got pushed to the side behind a chair in the family room and mostly forgotten by all of us.  So that was my first target.  Let's rethink placement on this kitty hammock. But where oh where else could it go?

We live in a small house. We, intentionally by the way, downsized. Perhaps a wee bit more than we probably should have but mostly it's all good.  But it's a rather efficient sort of space.  All furniture in the house is exactly where it should be and there is little open space leftover. It occurred to me that I could move something to make room for the hammock possibly or perhaps put it under something else (like a table).  I tried it out in multiple different spots. Nothing seemed exactly right. 

And then on my zillioneth walk through the living room it occurred to me that the space between the two swivel chairs it probably  exactly right, rules be damned.   I set the hammock in place and went on with my day assuming that it would take a few days before Brysco or Wyatt really paid any attention to the "new" old toy if they cared about it at all.

I left the room to bring a load of clean laundry in from the dryer to fold.  That's it. That's all I did.  I was gone for the precise amount of time it takes to take clean warm dry clothes from the dryer, pile it in a basket and bring it into the kitchen to fold.  I had just dumped the contents of the basket onto the counter, when I happened to glance into the living room and immediately my eye went to:

Wyatt lounging on t he hammock as if it were something he did every day.  He looked up at me with his sweetie face and I grabbed a quick photo.  I patted him a moment and went back to folding clothes.  I then put the clothes away and took the laundry basket back to the utility room.  When I returned, I looked toward the hammock, expecting to see Wyatt still happy in his hammock but instead saw:

Brysco!  I grabbed another quick snapshot and patted Brysco as I had done for his brother.  When had they changed places?  It was one and then the other almost immediately sort of like a magicians trick.  Presto Chango!

The point being that they have rediscovered a toy they loved before and then got bored with.   As long as Tim or I or both of us are in the kitchen or living room, there is often one house panther or the other in the hammock where they can keep an eye on us. Apparently that is their job and they take it VERY seriously. Sometimes they have to wrestle a bit to determine whose turn it is. We do not interfere as long as blood is not drawn.  Which is, coincidentally, the same rule I had for the human boys when they were small. Worked then, works now.

AND it all seems to have proved that the articles I read are correct.  Cats do get bored but they do not necessarily need new toys.  Old toys in a new place works great too.  Love it.  I will be doing more re-arranging in the future.  

​Just thought I'd share :)