Scooba Dooba Do

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New Prompt: Write a poem or story about a robot.
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“Scooba, behave yourself! Let go of Minna right now!” Seeing another of my cats being sucked into my robot’s water tank had me yelling from the far side of the wet kitchen floor. Only yesterday, when Scooba was washing the library floor, the small robot seemed to aim at any cat that dared to enter the room. My kitten, tiny Xanadu, thought she’d found a new toy until it caught her tail in the rotating brush and slowly, ever so slowly, drew the screaming feline inside for the bath of her life.

It had taken me half an hour to pull her out of my robot’s innards, and this only accomplished by slamming Scooba on a table to force her to open up. Thank goodness I know the value of percussion maintenance. Xanadu showed absolutely no appreciation for my help when I dug her out of the dirty water tank. She was a bit flattened, dripping wet, and in no mood to stop and give me her cat’s version of a thank you. Only a trail of tiny wet paw prints remained after her race out of the library to the safety of my bedroom. Looking at her from the doorway, I watched as she proceeded to dry off by rolling on my newly purchased, very expensive, velvet bedspread.

Today, not wanting to rescue another soaked flat cat, I decided to put a stop to this right away. “Stop it, Scooba, or I’ll set the dog on you.” This threat didn’t cause a second’s pause since Scooba must have known there wasn’t a dog anywhere near my cat house. The noise she was making ratcheted up a notch with Minna’s hind legs disappearing underneath the slowly moving robot.

Slipping and sliding rather ungracefully across the slippery kitchen floor, I ended up on my knees next to the circling Scooba. Inches away from my face was a panicking cat being sucked, section by furry section, through the robot’s brush until only rapidly twitching ears could be seen. With one final burp, Scooba finished digesting what she’d found on the floor, which used up the last of the clean water. The blue light came on, and the robot stopped in her assigned duty, the whirring sound of the last hour only a memory.

Then, and only then, did evidence of how thoroughly a floor washing robot did its job become evident. With the machine turned off, I could only sit on the damp floor, laughing almost hard enough to pee my pants, with the trapped cat inside making it clear she was not at all happy with her situation.

I love my Scooba.

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I most especially love my robotic lawnmower known as MYF or Mellow Yellow Fellow, but that’s another entire story.

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My warning, however, for anyone who decides to buy a robot is…take a head count of your pets before the robot is put away.

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Microsoft Word count = 491

Written for a daily "The Writer's Cramp"  contest.
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