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I'm been starting to try to read some Japanese novels recently, and one thing
that struck me was that when furigana is used, it seemed to show up in the
most unnecessary places.

For example, in the first few pages of Haruki Murakami [The Wind-Up Bird
Chronicle (ねじまき鳥クロニクル)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind-
Up_Bird_Chronicle), furigana was given for

猫 【ねこ】、椅子【いす】、眺【なが】める、泥棒【どろぼう】、恰好【かっこう】、悪戯【いたずら】、and 蜘蛛【くも】,

all of which are common words that I'd guess are easily readable by most
Japanese 10-year olds.

Maybe the last two are there since those words are usually written in kana,
but the first two for example, make no sense at all.
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furigana
Why does furigana often appear in the most unnecessary places in Japanese books?
It's not clear to me that furigana often appears in places where it isn't
necessary. Possible explanations for the use in the case of your book are that
the first character of isu used not to be in the Joyo kanji list until 2010,
and there is also a rule that animal and plant names should be in katakana.
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As @Chocolate states in the related link, I believe it has more to do with the
age/grade the kanji are taught in school, rather than the commonality of them.
So even though 猫 might be seen pretty often by young kids,
[several](http://nihongo.monash.edu/jouyoukanji.html)
[sources](https://kanjicards.org/kanji-list-by-grade.html) indicate that it is
not taught until junior high school (beyond 6th grade).
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I think the reasons are all various. According to the Association of Japanese
Newspapers, 椅子 is “a word with complex kanji or an existing tradition of
writing in hiragana,” that should prescriptively be supported by hiragana in
writing. 猫, meanwhile, is a word that is known from childhood but its kanji is
taught relatively late. 悪戯 is a very non-Jōyō usage, not listed among the
allowed non-standard readings in the Jōyō, 蜘蛛 is literally made of non-Jōyō
kanji. The novel was published in 1994-95, so 眺める and 泥棒 can be explained by
the fact that 眺 and 泥 are still recent additions of 1981 and not everyone is
guaranteed to know them. Only 格好 remains an outlier, but perhaps it is used in
a context where rendaku is possible, to prevent がっこう? Also, apparently, in
spoken Japanese it can be reduced to かっこ, and it could be to prevent that.
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In addition to the other answers, I have also seen cases where, when dialogue
is spoken by young children, sometimes the lines they say will use additional
furigana (or just writing words out in kana instead of kanji) to give the
feeling of the words being spoken by a young person (i.e. the included
furigana/kana is made appropriate to the age of the speaking character, not
necessarily the age of the expected reader, for stylistic effect)
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