The Great Panjandrum and the Food Thief

Posted on April 10, 2015 by elvisfanbelt

It was a Sunday afternoon and Mable’s owners had just set out her food. Mable began to cautiously take a few bites, but she didn’t have much time to eat because pretty soon a small black and white cat charged in through the hole in the fence, pushed Mable to the side and began gobbling down her food. When he was done he jumped over the railing on the patio and ran away as if Mable wasn’t even there.

This is what had happened every day since Connor, her owners’ son, had left for summer camp.

Sadly, her owners knew nothing about it since they went inside right after putting out her food. She wanted to go ask The Great Panjandrum for help, but the problem was: she was deadly afraid of cars and roads. She stood at the edge of the road, scared of all the cars. Finally she mustered up the courage and ran across the road. Now that she tried it, it was very easy–you just waited for a break in the cars and ran across the road.

The Great Panjandrum was reading Aristotle’s famous work On Comedy (in the Bluffton edition). He heard a scratching at his door, put his paw on the page to mark his place, and looked up. “Who is it?” he asked. A timid voice said “It’s– it’s– it’s me” and the Great Panjandrum opened the door. Mable wanted to run but again she conquered her fears and stepped inside.

The Great Panjandrum said “Hello Mable, what can I do for you?”

“How do you know my name?” she asked with a puzzled look on her face.

“Your collar says ‘Mable’” he explained.

Mable was still perplexed because she had never heard her collar say anything, but she decided to go on. She told the Great Panjandrum about her problem and he agreed to help.

The next afternoon her owners again put out her food, but this time she was much more confident. She stepped right up to her bowl and began to eat. As usual, the little black and white cat tore through the hole in the fence, pushed her away, and started to gobble down Mable’s food. This time, though, he suddenly floated up in the air, and then found himself pinned down by an enormous paw.

“Well, well” came a deep voice. “Is this your food?”

“P-P-P-Please don’t eat me!” he whimpered.

“Don’t worry, I wont eat you, but you can’t steal any more of Mable’s food.” The Great Panjandrum set Rascal down, and he ran away and never came back.

At least not in this story.

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How the Great Panjandrum Got His Name

Posted on April 8, 2015 by elvisfanbelt

In an animal shelter at 1997 N Clybourn Ave in Chicago there were eight kittens who all slept together, ate together, and played together. All the kittens were cute, all the kittens were playful, but one of them would be very different from the rest: Henry. It was late at night, when most of the workers had gone home, that Henry called together the first ever feline orchestra. He would have Harold and Matthew jump on some pie tins from the kitchen for the snare drums, Alissa would pluck the string holding the catnip mouse, and the rest would sing.

The book Henry was using wanted mallets instead of jumping kittens so it took some time for Henry to show his percussionists the proper technique. When everyone was finally ready he stood on the counter and raised his baton in the air. This was followed by a glorious outpouring of sound. Harold and Matthew jumped on each other’s pie tins and Alissa loudly pounced on the string until it snapped.

After a few seconds, the cats heard someone rushing up the stairs. They stopped playing and ran under the couch. Melanie the night worker stared around the empty room and said perplexedly “WHAT WAS THAT GREAT PANJANDRUM?” Hiding under the couch, Matthew poked Henry and said “That was you, you are the ‘Great Panjandrum,’” and that became what everybody called him.

So now you know how the Great Panjandrum got his name.

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The Great Panjandrum and the Viking Propellers

Posted on March 23, 2014 by elvisfanbelt

The Great Panjandrum was reading a scholarly article on Viking ships, which had been brought to his attention by a Danish cat named Skrill. This article, by one Dr. Gunnarson, claimed that Vikings had driven their ships (in the absence of wind) using propellers, probably driven by pedals, and that the oars were either decorative or used for fighting and close maneuvering. As evidence, he provided pictures of holes in the wooden hulls of antique Viking ships, which he claimed were positioned just right for propeller shafts. As to why no propellers or propeller shafts had been found among the ships – Professor Gunnarson said that these valuable metal parts were salvaged from sunken ships for use elsewhere, or simply rusted.

The Great Panjandrum was skeptical, and the next day he went to do some research at the public library. Creeping through the bushes, he went round to the Cat entrance behind a spruce tree, and onto the Cat floor of the library. The Cat floor was just below the main floor of the library, and the ceilings were 30 inches high – just right for cats. There, just below the floor of the human library, the cat shelves, the cat librarians, and the cat reference desk carried on their business, unknown to the humans.

The cat reference librarian helped the Great Panjandrum find all the information on Viking ships. There were pictures, and descriptions, and measurements, but it was clear that to really determine whether the propeller theory could be true, the Great Panjandrum would need to examine the Viking ships in person. And that meant going to Norway.

There was a ferry boat being built in Green Bay, Wisconsin, that was to be sent to Norway when finished. The Great Panjandrum kept careful track of the building progress, and when the ferry boat was nearly finished, he packed up two weeks’ worth of food, and went and hid inside the ferry boat. The next day, the ferry was tied to the back of an oil tanker which was on its way to the North Sea.

It took ten days to cross through the Greate Lakes and over the Atlantic. The Great Panjandrum had for company a rat named Starboard (even brand-new ships have rats) and an albatross named Siskind, who decided to travel with the ship to Norway when he heard that there was good fishing there. The three of them passed the time telling stories and jokes, and the Great Panjandrum learned many jokes from Starboard the rat. Unfortunately, all of Starboard’s jokes were too impolite to repeat here.

When the ferry got to Oslo in Norway, the Great Panjandrum went to the museums, sneaking in at night when the museum was closed. He carefully examined the holes, some open and some patched with wooden plugs. Most of the holes had little teeth marks on the inside edge, which exactly matched the way Starboard had described the holes that rats would chew in wooden ships.

The Great Panjandrum went to the University of Oslo, and found the office of Professor Gunnarson. Using the Professor’s typewriter, he typed a note. It said

Look at the inside of the holes in the ships.
Compare the tooth marks there to the teeth of a rat.
They will match.

Then the Great Panjandrum took an airplane home, using his favorite method of sneaking onto a plane. After that, Professor Gunnarson never wrote any more articles about the propellers on Viking ships. But he didn’t say that his earlier article had been wrong, either.

Originally reported 4/2/2010

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The Great Panjandrum and the East Wind

Posted on December 24, 2012 by elvisfanbelt

All summer there had been no East Wind in Chicago, and no rain. Usually, the East Wind blew across Lake Michigan, and the air picked up moisture and formed clouds. The clouds came over Chicago and surrounding areas and made rain. But this summer there had been no East Wind, and no rain, for months. Yards were dried up, and crops were not growing well. Everybody was worried.

Randolph Scott was especially worried. He was the weather man for Chicago, and every day he had to go on television and tell people “Sorry, it looks like no East wind for the next few days, so no rain.” Everybody was mad at Randolph. Most of the people knew that he didn’t make the weather, he only reported about it, but still they got mad at him, and sent nasty letters to the TV station. One evening Randolph went home and collapsed on the couch dejectedly. “It’s just awful” he complained to his cat Mackenzie. “Everybody is mad at me. What am I going to do?” Mackenzie sat in Randolph’s lap and purred, but he was secretly thinking of a plan.

That evening, Mackenzie snuck out through the hole in the basement screen, and crossed two yards, a street, and three more yards to the home of the Great Panjandrum. The Great Panjandrum was reading Diogenes’ In Search of Human Virtue (in the 1812 Hoffington translation). He heard a scratching at his door, put his paw on the page to mark his place, and looked up. “Who is it?” he asked.

Mackenzie introduced himself, and explained the problem with the East Wind, and how it especially affected his human Randolph. The Great Panjandrum said “I think we can do something about this problem. Come tomorrow night at midnight, and bring two other helpers. They must be brave, with strong claws, and not afraid of water.”

The next night, Mackenzie showed up with Lafayette and Mackintosh. Lafayette had heard about the water part, and had made himself some rubber boots out of some rubber fingertips. The Great Panjandrum handed out supplies: Mackenzie carried a coil of rope, Lafayette carried a roll of duct tape, and Mackintosh carried the flashlight. (This was unusual—since cats can see so well in the dark, they rarely use flashlights). The Great Panjandrum carried a small bag. “With some additional equipment,” he explained.

The four cats made their way across the yard, under the fence, and past several streets into the park. They skirted the Field museum and the aquarium, and made their way out the far edge of the planetarium, where the land ended. The Great Panjandrum led them to a small hidden cove, where a little boat bobbed in the water. “I’ve arranged for this boat,” he explained. (The other cats never did learn how the Great Panjandrum had arranged for a boat to be there.)

Mackenzie sat in the bow, Lafayette and Mackintosh in the stern. The Great Panjandrum sat in the middle and handled the oars. Quietly, with just the creak and splash of the oars in the windless night, the small boat headed out into the middle of Lake Michigan. After about half an hour, they found themselves under a cloud, which was floating above them, perfectly still. “There’s our destination,” said the Great Panjandrum. Under his direction, the cats used duct tape to fasten the oars to the sides of the boat, pointing straight up. A very large rubber band, from the equipment bag, was tied to the tops of the oars. “Now,” said the Great Panjandrum, “Mackenzie will go first.”

Mackenzie sat on the middle of the rubber band, and the Great Panjandrum pulled it down almost to the floor of the boat. Then he let it go, and Mackenzie flew up, up, up into the air, until he banged into the bottom of the cloud. He grabbed on with his claws, and scrambled up to the top of the cloud. Lafayette took off his rubber boots and was propelled up to the cloud the same way. Mackintosh was heavier than the first two cats, and the Great Panjandrum miscalculated— Mackintosh didn’t go high enough to reach the cloud. He started to fall down again, faster and faster. He was worried that he would fall right into Lake Michigan, but the Great Panjandrum reached out and caught him, and pulled him into the boat. On the second try, Mackintosh made it up to the cloud, and soon he too had scrambled up to the top.

None of the cats saw how he did it, but a minute later, there was the Great Panjandrum, scrambling up the edge of the cloud to join them. “Well, let’s see,” he said, and started looking around on top of the cloud. “Ah, here we are.” He opened a small trap door in the top of the cloud. There were steps made of cloud material going down into the dark interior of the cloud. Mackintosh, with the flashlight, went first, and the four cats descended into the middle of the cloud. They soon came to a small room filled with gears and pulleys and levers. A seagull hung from the machinery, with its wing feathers caught between two of the gears.

“I think we’ve found the source of the trouble” said the Great Panjandrum. “How did this happen to you?”

“I’m very sorry, Sir,” said the poor seagull. “I was catching fish, and I tried to take a shortcut through the cloud. My wing got caught in something, and I’ve been stuck here ever since. I’m very sorry, and I’m very hungry.”

“Well, let’s get you out of there,” said the Great Panjandrum. He engaged some latches, shifted a cotter pin, and exacerbated some castle nuts using a small wrench from the equipment bag. Then the four cats, working together, were able to rotate the gears enough to free the seagull. “Oh thank you thank you thank you!” said the seagull. I don’t suppose you have any food with you, do you?”

“We didn’t bring any bird seed,” said the Great Panjandrum, ” but there’s a whole lake full of fish right below us. Help yourself.”

“Thanks again,” said the seagull, and he zoomed off through the bottom of the cloud.

The Great Panjandrum engaged the machinery again, and the cloud started moving toward the shore. All the other clouds that had been stuck behind it also started to move, and the East Wind, which had been blocked by all the stuck clouds, started to blow again.

When their cloud was over Chicago, the cats tore off pieces of the cloud, and the Great Panjandrum tied a piece of rope to each bit of cloud, to serve as a kind of parachute. Mackintosh had a bigger chunk of cloud, and the Great Panjandrum had a piece that was half the size of a house. At the right moment, all the cats jumped off the side of the cloud, and came down through the rain, gently drifting down with their cloud bundles. As the cats landed in the back yard, their pieces of cloud dissolved into the rain.

Mackenzie made his way home through the rain, and snuck in the torn basement screen. He found Randolph awake and excited about the rain. “It’s raining! Halleluyah!” he shouted, putting on his rain boots. “I’m going to the TV studio right now to make a special weather broadcast!”

So Randolph was happy, but he never realized how lucky he was that he told his troubles to his cat, and how lucky he was that his cat had found the Great Panjandrum, and how the cats had unstuck the broken cloud and brought back the East Wind and the rain.

Originally reported 4/1/2010

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