I travel a lot, natch, and never liked cleaning my house even before I did, so I’ve always been looking for easy ways to take chores off my hands.  I have an automatic litter box for my cats and, automatic feeders for them, too. The latter makes it they don’t bother me for food – so I HIGHLY recommend it. But still, I am always looking for more time-saving devices like those.

Last year, on Prime Day or Black Friday on Amazon, I ordered one of those floor robot vacuums. There are so many of them available now, so it took a while to pick the one I thought was best.  I had had a Roomba a long time ago. I liked that it took care of some cat hair so I didn’t find fur bunnies everywhere. But it had all sorts of trouble getting onto rugs and I gave it away to someone who didn’t have as many thick area rugs as I had.  After much research into the burgeoning floor robot category, I bought one.

My first house elf

I named him Dobby the House Elf and I sent him roaming in my condo. With fur from 3 mostly-adorable cats (well, two completely adorable cats, and one slightly crazy asshole fur-ball of occasionally murderous tendencies), he had quite a job.  The cats at first were interested, concerned, and bored, and that quickly progressed to bored, bored, and bored.  The slightly asshole cat now just lets it bump into him and then wander away.  I was really hoping for a Dobby-riding-cat video but that is not to be. 🙁

And as intended, collect cat fur he did (as well as tons of dust and other small things). After a couple of test runs, I set him up to go out every day right before I get home from work. He cleans under beds and most furniture (he’s one of the thinnest robot vacuums in the market). This means he gets more of the cat hair that the cats seem to just pluck off their bodies and fling under furniture when I’m not home.

Yes, he can get stuck on a stray sock (I did not give it to him to free him), or underwear (also not given), or a stringy cat toy.  But what I love is that he never hurts the item. (Well, except the one time with the earbuds – but that’s totally on me). The programming is smart enough to just stop and beep when it runs into problems, so all you do is take the cat toy or whatever out of his hungry maw, set him on the ground, and press the button and he just keeps going.  And he is amazing at picking up cat hair.

He’s hired.  Well, as much as one hires a house-elf.  I would never give him a sock. Sorry.

More house elves needed

Well, I thought this was wonderful, so when the newer version was on sale, I bought it feeling sorry for how Dobby, even after weeks of dutiful cleaning, still came back every day just stuffed full of cat hair.  He seemed to need more help. 

This one is named Dobbette (my experience with house-elf names ending at Dobby, I improvised). She’s got a slightly spiffier exterior, more powerful suction, and runs around cleaning a bit longer than Dobby (although that might just be that her battery is new). [Note: as an amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases]

Dobby is the eufy BoostIQ RoboVac 11S Plus

Competing house elves

  I quickly found out that it’s not always great to have two house elves running around at the same time with no parameters.  Yes, there is very little cat fur or dust on your floor, but there are downsides.

What happens is when one gets tired it goes to whichever docking station it finds first.  Then the other one gets tired and also goes to whichever docking station it finds first. In Dobette’s case, she has no trouble pushing Dobby out of his dock and claiming at as her own. This leaves an exhausted sleep-deprived Dobby wandering around trying to find a place to call home. It was sad to watch. The cats didn’t care.

So I put a pair of shoes in the hallway to keep one in the back of my flat and one in the front.

Well, they took that as a vain attempt to keep them from their cleaning duties and shoved the shoes under the bookcase, cleaned under where they were, and went on their wandering ways. 

Something had to be done.

So now I have a heavy-enough drill set in the middle of my hallway preventing them from crossing sides.  Yeah, I have to pay attention to not trip over it, but it’s nice having two house-elves cleaning up a condo with three cats than just one.

Every day they come back full of mostly cat hair. Now, when I vacuum now I don’t have to empty the container after every room.  I’m happy.  I think the house-elves are happy.  The cats don’t care.

The end.

Happy Travels!