A Vacuum Cleaner by any other Name

Orca feeding on his hunting grounds

Like many people, vacuum cleaning is one of my pet loathes, so I decided to pretend my vacuum cleaner was a pet, hoping this fauna-isation would endear the chore of vacuuming to me more.

Choosing the animal and name of my vacuum cleaner turned out to be surprisingly easy. One day I caught a glimpse of its black and white body as it stood upright in my kitchen, hose attachment upwards. To my peripheral vision it looked remarkably like a mini killer whale. From that moment on Orca was born.

During the week Orca lives in a built-in wardrobe. He’s usually undemanding, but sometimes he gets in the way if I need to remove an item from the built-in that he’s blocking. He gets fed once a week, usually on a Sunday. Feeding time seems to come around remarkably quickly.

‘I’m hungry,’ he calls out through the door of the built-in wardrobe as I walk down the hallway.

‘Weren’t you fed yesterday?’ I call back.

‘No, it was seven days ago.’

He’s usually right.

I can’t believe it. Seven days have passed and it’s time to feed him again. By then plenty of food has gathered on his hunting grounds for him to suck into his stomach. He’s a heavy beast as I haul him around his territory, but he’s extremely eager, trying to ingest soft furnishings he shouldn’t, like my curtains. In spite of feeding him regularly, I wonder every time where his food accumulates from. I can’t see it in situ, but when I give him his comfort clean, the evidence of his stomach contents is before me. My carpet needed to be cleaned even though I wanted to convince myself it only needs cleaning once a month.

Half of Orca's stomach contents

Orca is a guzzler. That’s what you need in a vacuum cleaner. Sometimes I wonder if I should have bought a cordless vacuum cleaner because I could have called it Stick Insect. Too late now. Orca is my pet, although I have to admit that I think of him with more affection when he’s hibernating in his built-in wardrobe home than when I’m hauling him across the carpet to feed. At least I don’t have to pay for his pet food.