Darren,
 
Having owned quite a few ferrets and several recliners, I'm not convinced
that there's any foolproof way for the two to co-exist safely.  On the
other hand, boring rooms are easily made entertaining for ferrets.  We
maintain a collection of "found" toys that we rotate in and out of our
[otherwise boring] ferret room on a weekly basis, and our fuzzies have a
ball.  Some favorites at our house are:
 
  - cardboard boxes of assorted shapes and sizes with ferret-sized
    holes cut in them (ours like 2 or 3 holes per box); we leave
    some open and tape the flaps shut on others to facilitate king-
    of-the-hill games
 
  - dryer vent tubes or plastic drainage pipes in various lengths
 
  - ping-pong balls
 
  - ferret-proof furniture; ours like plastic step stools, which they
    magnanimously allow me to borrow when I need to reach something
    on a closet shelf; they also have their own child-size chair and
    ottoman
 
  - carefully selected dog and baby toys (rattles, teething rings,
    small rubber bones) and a teeny-tiny King rubber toy that's
    marketed for parrots [NOTE: keep a careful eye on these and
    remove anything that ferrets are attempting to consume!]
 
  - old bath towels for dragging around, hide-and-seek, and naps
    [but NOT if any of your fuzzies are cloth eaters!]
 
  - hollow plastic softballs, huge wiffle balls (be sure the holes
    are too small for a ferret's head), and plastic Easter eggs
 
  - their very own wastebasket, in which we occasionally deposit the
    aforementioned ping-pong balls or wadded-up pieces of paper
 
  - a box (or small child's wading pool) full of shredded paper or
    playground sand for digging
 
  - a mailbox (rural type, with a little red flag to show when the
    mail has arrived -- or when there's a weasel in residence); a
    favorite place to stash treasures
 
A lot of this is stuff we had lying around the house; the rest was picked
up at yard sales, thrift stores, and the like.  Ferrets are experts in the
bang-for-the-buck department.
 
I'd play it safe and confine your fuzzy in the "boring" room; just be sure
to provide lots of fun (safe) toys and he won't be bored.  When we lived in
a place without a ferret room, we had some success fencing off the recliner
when the ferrets were in the living room (10' of hardware cloth with the
ends wired together to form the fence -- hard to store when not in use,
though), but ONLY if there was a person in the room at all times to prevent
them from climbing the fence.
 
Hope this helps,
 
ellen & the Gang of [for the moment] Three
[log in to unmask]
 
P.S. The best way to prevent boredom is to have more than one ferret!
[Posted in FML issue 2374]