As you know, Constant Reader, our cat's name is Alex. (Now that Ally and I are married I can say "our cat," just like I can say "our blouses." Huge!) I love this animal with the white-hot fury of a thousand suns. We also have a Roomba vacuum, which we also call Alex just to avoid confusion. I love this vacuum with the red-hot fury of a thousand dwarf stars. So in metaphorical/astronomical terms the cat edges the robotic floor-cleaner, is what I'm saying, but not by so much that I'd pass up the opportunity for a polyamorous relationship with them both, emotionally speaking.

But neither Alex (feline) nor Alex (vacuum) are tryin' to hear that, see. Simply put, they hate each other. The cat's attitude toward the Roomba alternates between terror and rage. The vacuum, now that I think about it, is largely indifferent to the cat. This is because it is a machine and, so far as we know, incapable of emotion. But if we were to pretend that it was a robot or cyborg programmed by Cyberdyne Systems or North Central Positronics or a similar outfit, which needless to say I do, and often, it would reciprocate the cat's animosity. And not just because of its genocidal contempt for all organic lifeforms, mind you. It's a grudge match that all too frequently devolves into fisticuffs (pawsticuffs? suctionsticuffs?).

This happens all the time. Just today, there I was, happily bopping along to "How Bizarre" in a unitard with a maraschino cherry on my baby-oiled head (I've been mixing things up) and reading the instructions to my microwave on my Sony Reader while reminiscing fondly about Windows 98, when I hear Alex yowl and Alex rumble, and bam, I'm out of what I like to call "the Ken Zone." In part this was because the yowling Alex was the vacuum and the rumbling Alex was the cat, but it would have upset me either way. The stress is putting the "apart" in "apartment." (Before this conflict, I lived in a ment.)

Obviously, the ideal solution is to splice the cat and the Roomba into a cybernetic entity combining the best attributes of both--half-cat, half-vacuum, all cop, if you will. It could use the litterbox and then clean up the stray pieces of litter, use its own vibrations to comfort itself, apply gentle suction to my lap as it sleeps there. I would call this combined entity Axl rather than Alex, because I don't want to be predictable and because I love Side A of G'n'R Lies.