One of our big projects this summer has been rearranging and organizing the downstairs with the ultimate goal being that we’ll use it more often. Right now it’s mostly used by the cats and our office(s) are down there.  Our big TV and big comfy couch are also down there, but we haven’t been using either of those things. Admittedly it’s kind of nice to just fall asleep in bed while watching a movie and not have to make the climb upstairs, but I know the cats miss us hanging out more often.  We don’t sleep well when they’re allowed upstairs, so that is the biggest reason for their banishment.

Enter a new cat tree for them.  It hasn’t completely stopped Uzi from destroying our nice couch, but that combined with tape seems to have helped a tad.  Sigh. I guess I can’t get too mad at him since I know he doesn’t like being banished, so the couch ruination is partially my fault. One day I’ll have nice things… one day.

I’d like to say they’ve been utilizing this tree every day, but they haven’t.  I’d put it in front of a window, but there isn’t really a good window to put it in front of.  They’ve actually been spending the most time in my office because they have a nice bed in there to sleep on (for now). Come October, the bed will be moving upstairs into Enzo’s room.  Not like the cats don’t have a dozen comfy places to sleep.

One of the major drawbacks to having hard floors downstairs is how much colder it is.  If we decide to stay longer than one more winter we’d like to pull those up and put in carpeting.  As it stands we have a rolling space heater and bought one of those fireplace heaters as well, which actually works really well.  Maybe this winter we’ll spend more time with the kiddos… if I can find some more rugs so little tootsies don’t freeze.  In the meantime, I should probably make it more of a cat haven since they’re the ones who spend their days down there.  And maybe I’ll invest in one of those robotic vacuums for cat hair because good grief they shed like crazy.