Do animals get bored?

What do you reckon? This isn’t really a rant by the way, just a weird musing you could say. Do animals get bored?

If you look at my cats then they just wander round all day, exploring is fun, when I was a kid I used to love exploring, but after about a week then they must have explored everything within their ‘oh shoot how do I get back to that guy who feeds me’ range and therefore must be bored out of their little mouse killing skulls right?

Yet they seem happy as Larry (who is this Larry guy anyway, and what the hell makes him so happy!?) to sit their on the seat round a tree and just stare at stuff, or me if they want to get in, I can feel their stare boring into my skull for hours sometimes as I am working. What are they thinking about as they sit there?

Could a cat ipod work? They could listen to some of their favourite meows, or a little cat tv, they could watch that instead of just sitting their. Or could we get them working instead? Get them running on a little cat treadmill to power my computer and every minutes of running they get a treat?

Hmmmm, no mine would just jump on my head as soon as I tried to put one of them on the treadmill, claws out no doubt. If we could harness power from them sleepy, some kind of thermal energy, that’d do it, getting them to sleep is no problem!

So – who I have the kitty tv to make – who is going to take the ipod idea and run with it?