Yes, but I wanted it to be accessible to my 5 yr old. I've also had it on the dining room table-but then my wife wanted to have some people over. I tried to design the layout so my son can can access to it as much as possible. That is why it has a "ring road." My cat pretty much leaves it alone, although she has barfed on it a few times!
Yes, I bought two GE's. I supplemented the bottom story with my own bricks and the base came from the last gas station that had the small car wash attached to it. The top two floors of each "set" are connected (so they are one long piece) but there is currently a wall separating the inside. (The original exterior wall of the GE.) I was a bit lazy building it and I need to go back and take the now internal wall out and maybe put in some decorative arches or something like that to help support the story above it. At the time I was debating on weather or not to keep the 2 sets so I didn't want to just rip into the 1st corner model. I guess now that they have been built for about a year I'm keeping them both!