Willow is a changed cat.
Since she has assumed the role of Chief Mouser she is even more detached, lost in her new found passion and in the blood lust.
To be honest, it gives me the creeps.
Grant always says “it’s what cats do.” He’s right.
It’s just me who must make an adjustment.
The new Willow refused to be impressed by Ralph.
While the others:
Lily was the first to meet this strange thing.
The technical Head of Household, Lily is fearless…
…and she followed Ralph on his maiden voyage.
Sasha (Dee Dee) who thinks she’s Head of Household retreated to the top of a cupboard, but not wanting to seem cowardly…
….she zeroed in for a better look.
Sikkim was hesitant but more curious than fearful.
Toby wanted to know why his siesta was being disturbed.
And Patches did not stir from her sunny day dream.
So, we introduced Ralph to the cats and they basically were not impressed one way or another. He’s only had a couple of outings so far but he is going to be kept busy.
Roomba is a robotic vacuum cleaner. The ultimate in laziness? Perhaps, but not when you’ve got 11 cats and pushing an ordinary vacuum causes serious backache. The 2021 model is very much improved over the original which basically picked up a few crumbs and not really very much else.
In registering the device, I was obliged to give it a name, which is why it’s Ralph.
Ralph is much larger in size than his long ago ancestor and he has much improved suction. I was impressed.
Of course, this is no normal household where Ralph would bump into walls and a few bits of furniture. This house is booby-trapped with cat beds and boxes and cat toys, so when Ralph is summoned from his dock we have to lift a few things off the ground, but that’s only a small problem.
We have a small set of steps from the front to the back of the house, but Ralph knows not to pitch himself off. When he bumps into something he swivels and changes direction, which is how, eventually, he covers the entire floor.
After his initial outing, our floors looked quite respectable! Ralph can keep at it for 90 minutes and when he runs out of energy, he takes himself back to base and plugs himself in. Isn’t Ralph a clever boy?
We had been discussing “Alexa” and saying how we would not want our lives to be intruded upon by an artificial intelligence of that sort.
So the following day…
“We can load Ralph onto our phones!’ said Grant.
“Really?” Why would we want to? However….
We sat like a pair of fools attempting to do just that.
Simply to see if we could. Grant succeeded. I gave up. My efforts were slightly challenged by the fact that my new phone chose this moment to activate my request for French as default language.
After all, when I was in the French convent, in 1960 they didn’t have artificial intelligence or computers. For that matter, they didn’t have phones and after 9 pm they didn’t have electricity either because that’s when the generator was turned off.
So my French is a little lacking in modern verbiage. But with the instruction book, I can now update myself at least in the matter of vacuum cleaners.
Isn’t that useful?
This picture is me right now. Enervated.
Everything wants to fight me.
My mail goes to a PO Box, not my street address.
And since our nice lady in the Post Office retired, I get snide little messages scrawled on notices from my health insurance company who use the street address, requesting that I “USE THE BOX!”
The envelope, containing information of no importance was sitting on my desk, annoying me with its rude message, so after lunch I said “fine, let’s fix it!”
First I went online, foolishly thinking I could just type in the correction with a couple of entries…yah!
Using my new phone (I really must name it), I got through the menu of choices to a person, at the insurance company, gave her all the information only to be told someone else deals with that:
So I went through the same blurb again and was told “we have the PO Box number!” I had a rude thought but withheld it, listening instead to her advice: “you can file a forwarding address with the US post office!”
Sure.
But I thought…”well let’s just see where that goes”…..and NO. I am NOT paying $20 every 6 months to have my mail forwarded to the place it’s already in, just because it’s such a challenge, in that minuscule Post Office for somebody to remember which box it is that C. Smith is assigned to.
Oh, I like Toby’s expression the most … it’s that look of “just bugger off” (can I say that in good company?) 😉.
So, Ralph is your super cleaner (my friend’s got one too – named her Sally … such a sweet name for a vacuum cleaner I thought) and her two cats are following Sally everywhere in the house (even sleeps on her when she is ‘plugged in’). Happy days Carolyn – that’s now with Ralph, not with the Post Office 👀.
Does Ralph take himself to empty the dust bag?
No doubt the next generation will do that!