I don't have many pics, but just off the top of my head, the cat toys are all in a wicker basket that sits under the coffee table in the living room, the scratchy roller things (I don't know what they're called...wave shaped scratcher that has sisal and carpeting) that are their most favorite toy EVER are bought in neutral tones to go with the room, the litter boxes are the color of the floor tile. and they have a number of beds throughout the house that are either painted or stained to go with the room, and matresses are covered in fabric that coordinates with the room.

This is Frank and one of his beds:

Oh my franksmom I love your kitty beds!!!! How cute. Are they originally doll beds?

Wonderful idea. Now I'll be looking at doll beds in antique shops in a whole new light.

That is so adorable. I can't believe they really lay on them.

lucille - I'm currently shopping for a sofa and I'm definitely keeping my dog in mind when I look at fabrics, because she sheds.

Laurie

My house will never look like a magazine picture, I've just resigned myself to the fact. Life gets in the way too much. For example, in this picture you see my dog's shelf I built because she LOVES looking out the window. But you also see the floor fan and the hose from the portable air conditioner because houses don't generally have A/C here and it gets so hot during the summer. Ugly, yes. Necessary? YES. Oh well.

I wouldn't have all of those cat beds if they didn't lay on them! LOL! Yes, they're old doll beds. They just have to be sturdy enough to support the cat (our biggest is 17 lbs and still growing!)

Frank is particularly fussy about his bed. It's *HIS* bed, and it has to be next to our bed. I tried replacing it with something bigger, because he's long outgrown it, but nothing else with do. That bed has to be right there, or no one sleeps well!

There's a larger, fancier, stained 4-poster in the living room, and when they were all kittens, the whole gang would get in it. Now, only three of them can squeeze in. My cats are so spoiled!

Lucille...my animals are a part of my family, so naturally their stuff is a part of my decor. See below: My cat Bella in her very large kitty condo that takes up a large part of my DR. There is another condo in my MBR and big dog stuff all around as well!

Haven't bought a sofa in decades that didn't have a roll top back or arms because where would the cats go (like they have nowhere else to sit :0).

Made the movers crazy with the cat tree so it would be in one piece when it came in.

Jump through hoops to divide windows between cats and plants (and plants usually lose).

Can't find my throw rug - it's always covered in toys etc.

We keep the litterboxes in a closet so that they don't look bad in the spare room. Plus it makes a private space.

I have a cat condo in the corner of the hallway upstairs.

There is a very nice looking large dog pillow in our family room, and a smaller bed for the cats or our beagles.

Don't worry, you can incorporate these things without them beign too ugly or obtrusive!!!!!

The thing we have trouble with is the hair! It will always be here, it's not going anywhere, and it's a war we aren't goign to win. We could vacuum every day sure but what a waste of time. We vacuum about once a week, and right before company. In the in-between-times, we just deal with the hair. It's the cost of having animals (two cats 3 dogs).

The only thing that adds to ugliness are the gates we have up for the dogs but there is no avoiding it!

This blue cube rolls all over the place. I normally will move it, along with all the 300 mice and ball toys, out of the photos. It reminds me of an ugly ottoman or something and I "really" don't like how it looks, but they love it so I deal.
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The scratching post(s) sit behind the loveseat. I bought a new one because the other is looking rough but they don't seem to like it.
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Instead, the oldest one (10) has found a love for the back of the furniture. Grr..
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This bed is in our room and two of them use it daily. Originally it was a piece of foam covered in furry material but once I discovered how much they loved out new coverlet, I put one of the pillow cases over the insert. They love it even more now.
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We also have a standard kitty bed that we put in the basement, in front of the pellet stove, that the older one loves to sleep in.

They're always are on the backs of the couch looking out the window or sleeping.

Franksmom, that's a first for me too. Mine love to snuggle down in stuff like baskets and kitty cups. They do share our bed, because there's plenty of room to sprawl out.

Colorblind, Bella's a beauty!

We used to have a Keebler elf tree. It was so big we couldn't move it through any interior doorways, so it sat in a corner of the dining room for a few years. Not the ideal spot, but when you share your life with 4-legged friends you learn to be flexible. ;)

Hollow tree we eventually donated to someone in cat rescue:

My one Border Collie has a old wicker basket with a hood that was used for a infant. It has a pillow in the bottom of it that she hides toys under from her brothers.
I switch out her blankets which are pieces of fleece for washing and they match our bedroom decore. The basket sits on the floor next to our bed. ANY variation in sleeping arrangements like the other Border Collie or one of the cats trying to sleep in that basket causes major sleep problems for EVERYONE!
Toys for the dogs are kept in a old crate downstairs. Toys for the cats get tossed and played with and then hidden by the cats till they want to play again.
The cats have baskets downstairs that they sleep in, more often than not they prefer to sleep on the bed with us. Anything I use for the bedroom has to be easily washed and dried.
Come warmer weather I'm having a kitty condo built for the upstairs back porch. It's all enclosed and the two boys NEED the exercise they would get from climbing it. They are both former feral farm cats who appreciate the new life they have here WAY TOO MUCH!

Life with BIG birds...
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I love seeing people's pets! Those Blue and Golds are so pretty...you must have some really big cages to fit into your decor as well!

Here's some of my critter decor:

And here are the animals:

It was a struggle to find complementary flooring...

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Dawn

Dawn, how many do you have? 8? I thought I was overloaded with 6! ;-)

Dawn that picture is priceless. Love the flooring too.

Wow! I can't imagine more than two. Course we have a small home.

My 'kids' scoff at my attempts to protect upholstery from them. I could post 100's of pics, but here are a few that illustrate who really runs the show here.

Sam - Why lay on the sheet? Push it aside and enjoy the sofa.

Joey - Who uses the sheets, but likes to be UNDER them.

Joey and Jenny, not only shoving aside the sheet to lie directly on the sofa, but making sure the pillows are used to their best advantage, too. ALL of my 'decor' is dog tested and approved!

LOL, I love how she covered herself with the sheet.

This thread has been really interesting to me. I've been letting the cat into the kitchen lately (he's a feral cat I'm taming), and I put an old towel down on my entrance rug so he won't claw it. Every time I look at him on it, instead of thinking how neat it is that he is comfortable in the house, I think how I wish I didn't have that ratty old towel in my kitchen.

my3dogs - I love those photos. I frequently come into the living room to find that the sofa pillows have be rearranged. Jake here thought our bench was made just for him!

On the subject of critter decor, has anyone found any good crate covers? We have 4 crates in our living room and adjoining sunroom and right now I'm using sheets to cover them but I'd love to find something more functional in muted colors. I've found a few but they generally only have openings on the one end and most of my dogs use the second door on the wide side.

Call some boat builders (yellow pgs) and ask about canvas... it really works for dogs because they can't destroy it (used it cover crib mattresses for our Sammies) and it's hose-downable. Maybe they could dye it for you (tho' be sure they're color fast).

I don't know why it should bother me since the wall behind it is about to be ripped out. He won't be a house cat, but I have to keep him in until he eats all the food I medicated. See his foot? Now that he is neutered, there is a badder cat in the neighborhood.

When I bought my sofa, I brought fabric samples back from the store and rubbed each one on my dog's back to see how well you could see the dog hair, LOL. I ended up getting the sofa upholstered the same color as the dog.

Wow thats a lot of beautiful cats! and the birds are gorgeous.
Because our family includes two huge golden retrievers- we have large dog beds on the floor in our bedroom- Bailey likes them Cooper not so much.
I have room sized Karastan oriental rugs in the living room and dining room- which are sent out every 3-4 years to be washed ( or immediately when Cooper was sick all over one of them) The patterns disquise any day to day spills- and are easy to spot clean.( those humans and their coffee)
Slipcovered sofa( air drying now as we speak) and I made washable covers for CL cushman colonial wood chairs.
Our guys dont get on the furniture- but they rub and lie against it- so I need everything to be easily washable.
Dog hair- Goldens blow their coats twice a year- and that is when sometimes dog hair becomes a condiment. Other times just bi weekly vacuuming is good enough. Their hair seems to stay on the floor, not the furniture.
Golf ball basket holds their toys and lets them shop. other wise they are on the floor.
Leashes hang from a decorative shelf with hooks and little bins. Dog brushes etc are in a drawer in living room. their meds are stored with ours.

Most of our great room furniture is leather but, like cooper's dogs, our 2 Australian Shepherds aren't allowed ON the sofa, but it is amazing the amount of dirt and slime I wipe off just from them rubbing up against it.

All rugs are wool because it's easier to vacuum mud and hair from them.

The sunroom cushions and the eat-in chair cushions are white but washable to remove dog and cat hair.

The kennels are in the basement.

I have baby gates on the dining room to keep my 21 year old female cat from throwing up on the rug in there.

All bed coverings are washable.

I vacuum and dust at least every other day, sometimes every day.

Their leashes are hung on golf-club head hooks in the garage. (or will be as soon as DH gets it hung!)

But, suffice it to say, it is all worth it.
Dee

Franksmom - meant to tell you that your black cat is so beautiful!

dawn t and others, may I ask what your methods are for keeping litter multiple cats? Any advice or ideas are welcome!

Is there a ratio of cats to boxes?

How have you all been creative in camouflaging the boxes?

Thanks!

I kid you not, five minutes ago I walked into the LR to get my drink, and I wondered where Gracie was since she wasn't sprawled on the sofa as usual. It's supposed to get down to 11 tonight too, but as I turned around, this is what I found!

Catkin,
I'm fortunate to have a room in the basement that houses the litter boxes, although the litter still gets tracked around a bit.
I use 3 huge shallow plastic containers that I found at Walmart (think they're actually underbed storage boxes) with a clumping litter and it gets cleaned twice daily. No problems (so far) with cats sharing the boxes.

It's a crazy number of cats, I know. They're actually all old (stray/rescued) barn cats that I've had neutered and spayed over the years. They usually spend the summer outdoors, since we're in the country, but it's -20ish outside these days. DH started slowly letting them in during the build and now they think they own the new "barn". They have a perfectly good, very warm horse barn to live in, but they're spoiled rotten now...

Dawn

Well, I currently have two bird cages in my kitchen, and a large rabbit cage (holland lop) in my family room downstairs. Upstairs, we have another bird and three hamsters.

And, of course, my spoiled shih tzu has use of the whole house, the foot of our bed, the back of the sofa, and the window sill in the dining room. (She thinks she's a cat.)

The rabbit will move upstairs when college-aged daughter leaves and her sister gets her room back to herself! LOL

Doesn't everyone's desk come with a cat blanket and cat?

Here we have coordinated Nunyette's Yule bandana with the blanket on the chair

Snook prefers the arm of the sofa

You'll notice the lack of coffee table and side table accessories. Also the blankets on the sofa, dog bed in background (one of 5 between living room and dining room).

I wish I could keep my bird out in the LR but he stays in my home office because the dogs would eat him. Maybe not Snook.

Thanks dawn, that's a great idea! LOVE all the kitties!

I am gratuitously posting my guys photos to show you that I live with dogs that have fun outdoors and love to swim. i.e. they are just dogs being dogs. Cooper, Bailey and the black lab is Tucker my DDs dog. They weigh 104,86,and 62 lbs. respectively and they take up a lot of space!Any chance to post dog photos!

tournant - where did you get that big tree for your birds?