A quiet house is not a sad house.

There is a particular kind of anxiety now common among new pet owners: the fear that the animal is bored. A dog left alone for a few hours must be under-stimulated. A cat who naps all day must be depressed. The solution, sold to us at volume, is a constant roster of toys, enrichment puzzles, treat-dispensing feeders, rotating activities, and — in the more extreme end — scheduled "playtime" blocks on Google Calendar.

We want to quietly disagree with this, because it isn't true and it sells a lot of unnecessary things.

Dogs and cats sleep, as a category, between fourteen and eighteen hours a day. This is not a consequence of boredom. This is their biology, refined over millions of years of being predators who conserve energy between exertions. A cat curled on a windowsill for six hours is not suffering. A dog asleep under your desk is not depressed. They are, in fact, doing what their bodies want to do.