Rudy sat at the window, looking, looking, looking. No cat. He wandered the yard, looking, sniffing. No cat. He howled into the woods behind our house. I listened carefully, trying to translate his moaning message. He misses the cat.
I finally sat Rudy down and had a man to dog conversation with him.
“Rudy, the cat is taking the winter off,” I said. “Maybe he went to a warmer climate.”
“To hell,” I thought I heard him whisper under his snout.
He moped around the house for a while. He tried to make an enemy of a stuffed chicken we gave him as a toy. He did his best to attack the broom, but lost his passion for that too. He just wasn’t feeling the hate. Then we got the Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner. Rudy forgot the cat. His archenemy is now the Animal.
The Dyson Animal, is famous in vacuum circles. It is weird and purple. It sucks. Seriously sucks. It will suck dust, dirt, fibers, hair and your sock clean off your foot. It picks up things we didn’t even know were on the floor. Our Animal even sounds like an animal as it does its sucky job.
Rudy abhors a vacuum. He wasn’t fond of our old vacuum, leaving teeth marks all over it to the point that we had to put him in the bathroom to keep him from completely eating the thing like a corndog. He sees the Dyson Animal, however, as the worst kind of threat: mechanical competition.
When we say “The Animal,” Rudy jerks into a snarling spasm and runs to the closet where the Dyson hides between carpet-sucking episodes. He shoves his nose into the crack under the door and inhales deeply, as if he believes he can suck the Animal from its hiding and into the open for combat. He’s done this before with birds under the deck, trying to inhale them through the cracks between the planks. Rudy will not, however, out-suck the Animal.
He has dreams about the Animal. When he wakes in a jolt, he goes straight to the closet door and makes odd sounds in his larynx (I assume he has a larynx). If he’s been outside, taking care of business, upon returning, he again goes straight to the Animal closet. The vacuum is torturing him from in there.
We talked to a friend who claims to understand animals. She said he was previously the only animal in the house and now that we have a Dyson Animal, he feels threatened. I know he is a smart Jack, but I think that assessment gives him a bit too much credit in the vocabulary department. Maybe it’s the new reality that this thing will take away all the hair he sheds and he’s feeling a little emotionally naked.
I’m not sure what will happen if the cat returns in the spring. But Rudy knows the Animal never leaves. And that’s the problem.