Kittenzen: Boredom

Kittens want new experiences every day, no, they NEED new experiences every day or they start creating them on their own with your stuff. So we have taken to changing the spaces in our small home to give them new geography to explore. Simply taking the sheets off the bed and leaving the rumpled quilt on it for the day before we put new sheets on gives them a new play area.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ [That by the way, was our kitten Mallory's contribution to the blog.] We have a  box we got at Costco that has an opening in the side which we turned over for them to use as a cave and every now and then I create a new hole for them. The other day I put a hole in the top and when our kitten Jane jumped on top of it she fell into the hole...

So the other day Mark and I were out walking in the rain on the Chehalis Western bike trail near our house. He had had an irritating morning and we were talking about it (constantly losing things like the mail key in our small house and musing about what would happen in a larger space). He spied a path across a field off the trail that we had never taken, so we took it and wound up at an abandoned home that had a good structure but had been totally trashed inside (copper wire removed, glass broken, etc.). We walked around the house and then took another trail into the surrounding woods. I asked Mark if he was happy now and he said, "Why, yes, I am." "Ah," I said, "you are just like the kittens. You get bored with the same thing every day and need new experiences every day to keep you happy." (I did remark about not being able to make any new holes for him, though....)

Some of us are like dogs and we are happy with the same thing every day--routine makes us happy. But some of us are like kittens and we need new spaces to explore and new experiences whether they be mental or physical or we get bored and start destroying stuff. Probably more accurately we all have both needs to varying degrees.  My mother always told me "watch the cats: they know how to live." We are mom. We are.