The living room smelled like burnt toast and regret. Whiskers, a cat with a fur coat of half-hearted rebellion, crouched behind the couch, tail flicking like a metronome of dread. The vacuum cleaner—a chrome-plated menace named Gary—hummed in the hallway, its red eye pulsing like a dystopian heart.
“Game on, fuzzy,” Gary beeped, spewing a gust of dust that turned the air into a low-budget horror movie.
Whiskers darted into the kitchen, leapt onto the counter, and hid inside a flour sack. Gary whirred forward, sucked up a rogue sock, and emitted a sound like a deflating balloon. The flour sack trembled. “You can’t catch me!” Whiskers yowled, though his voice sounded suspiciously like a kazoo.
Gary paused. “Invalid move,” it said, then sucked in the entire bag, flour and all. Whiskers coughed, emerged as a duster-covered mummy, and made a break for the hallway. Gary chased him, knocking over a lamp that exploded into a cloud of glitter and existential dread.
In the end, Whiskers surrendered, perched atop the fridge, as Gary parked itself in front of the TV. “You win,” Whiskers muttered. Gary beeped once, then played a video of itself doing the Macarena. The cat blinked. “…Okay, you’re kind of cool.”
The next day, they were best friends. Gary vacuumed the carpet. Whiskers napped on the couch. And no one mentioned the sock.
