As one that has had a young Lab in the house much of the time since 1991, I have put some wiring 4-5 feet high. I replaced the cord on my surge protector with BX. Yes, I do work at supervising them and crating them, but nobody can be 100%.
HDMI is the current technology for HDTV; but (not an expert) as I understand it, it is point-to-poin, one to one not one to many. The source and TV must handshake and exchange codes if the signal is encrypted.When the MPAA gets over their current paranoia, or more likely when technology bypasses them, odds are HDTV distribution will be some other tech. My bet is on ethernet-like technolgies.
YMMV but it should be noted that HDMI does not stand up for long cable runs, it was based on the DVI standard which was meant for feeding a computer monitor a few feet away from a CPU rather than serial digital like professional broadcasters use. For long cable runs you need repeaters, HDMI over CAT5, or to use analog component instead, but these all come with their own problems.