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“Max—you have to do something before it kills us all!” Harriet yelled from the windowsill. She could have made the leap to freedom and into the backyard but that meant she had to jump to the floor first, and she wasn’t taking any chances. Not with this monstrosity roaring through the livingroom, like a life-sized out-of-control Pac-Man.

Though I should probably say Pac-Cat!

“Max has to do something?” asked Brutus. “Why are you askingMax to do something? What am I? Chopped liver?”

“I didn’t mean it like that, sugar plum!” said Harriet. “I just figured… Max might have inside information about this machine that we don’t.”

Brutus didn’t look happy by this development, and already his cocky demeanor was waning fast.

“I think it’s a UFO,” said Dooley, adding his two cents. “Except it doesn’t fly. So it’s probably more like a UNFO, an Unidentified Non-Flying Object.”

“It’s just a vacuum cleaner, Dooley,” I said, as I couldn’t stop staring at the Roomba as it rumbaed past me. It was eating its way through a stack of dust bunnies, that was for sure. Like a serial killer, whacking them one by one. I just wondered when it was going to tire of the bunnies and start on us. After all, even a serial killer moves from drowning kittens to his first human kill—there’s a definite progression there—or worsening.

“Do you think there are little green men inside?” asked Dooley, following his own train of thought, regardless of my input. “Little green men who control the machine?”

“It’s not a UNFO, Dooley,” I said. “And there are no little green men inside.”

“Maybe little green gerbils?” he suggested. “Or little green mice?”

“Don’t mention the word mice!” Harriet yelled. “Whatever you do, never mention the word mice around me ever again—I told you, Dooley!”

Harriet has had it in for mice ever since we were overrun with that large family of mice. Luckily they’ve since relocated, after an intervention by Clarice, one of our more heavy-handed feline friends.

“I think you could have asked me for a solution, that’s all,” said Brutus, still moping. “I mean, what’s Max got that I don’t? Seriously.”

“Oh, Brutus,” said Harriet. “Don’t be like that.”

“Maybe we should talk to the little green gerbils and ask them to stop,” Dooley suggested. “I’m sure they can hear us, so why don’t we try to negotiate a truce?”

“Okay, so Max is smart, but so am I,” said Brutus. “And frankly I’m a lot stronger than Max, so if it’s muscle you’re looking for, I’m your cat, not Max.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Harriet. “Brutus, please save us from the horrible machine.”

Brutus looked nonplussed at this.“I’ll have to come up with a plan first.”

Harriet rolled her expressive eyes.“Max! Save us, please!”

“If we could just talk to the little green gerbils,” said Dooley, “I’m sure they’d listen.”

Finally I’d had enough. Between Dooley’s little green gerbils, and Brutus’s whining, and Harriet’s panicky screams, and of course the Roomba’s relentless rumbling, like a World War II tank crushing all resistance, I needed to put a stop to this thing. But how?

“Or it could be a terminator,” Dooley babbled on. “Sent from the future to hunt down the leader of the human resistance.” His eyes went wide. “You guys—do you think Odelia could be the mother of the future leader of the human resistance? She’ll have to watch out for this thing. It will probably try and kill her!”

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore, and I jumped. Yes, I jumped right on top of the thing. Now when twenty pounds of (more or less) lean feline beef rocket through the air and land from a great height, consequences will be had. In this case the consequence was a loud crack. The Roomba crashed right through its wheels, gave one final death rattle… and died.

I glanced down, and discovered the little blinking LED light on top of the thing had died, like the light in the eyes of The Terminator. And much to my relief, the terrible hoovering sounds had stopped, too, as had the relentless forward motion.

“You did it, Max!” said Harriet. “You killed the machine!”

“Any green gerbils that you can see?” asked Dooley, interested.

“No green gerbils,” I announced. “Only batteries.”

Slowly, my friends all approached, still keeping a safe distance, lest the Roomba rumbled back to life and started zapping them with its laser beams, like Ida Baumgartner’s late husband’s invention.

“I think it’s dead,” I said as I stepped down from the thing, then gave it a slight tap.

My friends all did the same now, and when a moment later Odelia entered the room she found four cats tapping away with their paws at her mother’s precious Roomba.

To her credit, though, instead of being upset that we’d killed this latest toy she burst into laughter instead. Marge then hurried in to find out what was going on, and when she saw us hitting the slain machine, she, too, had a laughing fit.