Bob Makes Sweeping Changes at Home

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We have a new family member. Bob doesn’t require feeding or being taken outside to do his business. He hums and squeaks but does not bark or meow. He does require regular maintenance in order to efficiently operate. Other than that, Bob is trouble-free, content to spend his downtime beneath the spare couch in the front room, safely docked in his station. Bob is a robotic floor cleaner, a Father’s Day gift from daughter Abbie.

I would never have purchased a robotic floor cleaner on my own but am grateful that Bob  has joined the household. He got his name because “Bob” is in the brand name. Bob required installing an app on my phone, from which I set his schedule (10 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday – what I jokingly call union hours), track his progress, and can view the digital map he has made of our home’s floor.

Clearly, there is an app for everything these days. Our waste-disposal service has an app, which notifies me that pickup day is still Friday, or it has been backed up a day because of a holiday. Another app saves me money on prescriptions while another lets me know the cheapest place to buy gas when we are out of town. This might be a minority view in the geezer world that I now inhabit, albeit unwillingly, but I love not having to worry about keeping track of boarding passes, bank cards, concert tickets, etc. All I have to do is: NOT LOSE MY PHONE!

So far so good. Back to Bob.

The little guy did not become fully operational until Abbie came to town for a visit. I have learned to largely defer such technical endeavors, such as installing Bob’s app and getting him situated, until she is here. It is not that I can’t figure it out eventually. Abbie, being a generation younger, can figure out what needs to be done in a fraction of the time it would take me. Thus I defer to youth.

Bob’s first foray through our house was an experimental journey, meant to figure out which chair legs blocked his way, or to note a lamp cord could cause entanglement. As expected — indeed, giddily anticipated — Bob terrorized our four critters, who did not appreciate this interloper on their fiefdom. At one point, Mollie the Maltese, Tater the Blubba Nugget cat, and Gatsby the Cavapoo were all perched on the bed in the spare bedroom, watching with alarm as Bob worked beneath them. Olive the Invisible Kitty was, well, nowhere to be found, as usual.

A few weeks have passed, and Bob no longer strikes terror in the hearts of our critters. They apparently figured out he was not a threat to their food bowls and was not going to steal their beloved toys. So Bob works away, providing yours truly a source of fascination as I watch him negotiate his way around our one-story house. Since we have no carpet — it does not pair well with critters — Bob works largely unimpeded, scooping up fur, grass clippings and stray bits of dry dog food.

Bob’s work has lessened mine. Before his arrival, I grabbed the hand vacuum nearly every day to clean the floor. Our dogs do not really shed, but they constantly track stuff inside. Tater – all 16 pounds of him — is a slow-walking furball. I took him to the vet for his annual vaccines the other day, something he does not enjoy, of course. As he crouched and tried to avoid the tech’s attempt to take his temperature, a lung-choking cloud of fur wafted through the air. At home, Tater’s ability to cast hair everywhere is not as apparent.

This is just part of the price one pays for having critters, along with scratched furniture and dog toys carefully scattered so one will step on them barefooted and send me into paroxysms of pain.

That is a small price to pay for the joy the critters bring. Now we have Bob to shoulder the load on cleaning duties.

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