…we are poofed by a magical wand? This question has come up frequently (well, it does around here, I don’t know how often you come up against this problem!) at the offices at The Institute for Contemporary Panda Satire! Just where do we go when we are “poofed”?
We recently heard a story on NPR about an office in Tokyo, where nine cats live and work side by side with all the people in the office. They claim that it reduces the stress levels in their employees. I don’t know if my stress levels would be reduced if I arrived at my desk to find a great big hairball barfed up on a report I had been working on for two weeks. But hey, maybe that’s just me.
Anyway, when considering where Mehitabel would end up when Pinky “poofed” her, I thought that maybe this would be a good place for her to go.
Mehitabel! Can you take a meeting?
I didn’t know they worked, either, Bob.
Be the Bear, and if you can’t be a bear, be the cat!
Bob T. Panda
Who got cats to agree to met. I say let us give that person a medal.
Must have been some pretty intense negotiations! Cats! I have a cat in my office, and let’s just say, she is not always a bonus.
There is a small local real estate office that has at least one resident cat…the owner is there all the time, working working. Her desk looks like the tower of Babel. So she and the kitties are company for one another. I still like to think that Pinky poofed Mehitabel into the toy bunny, because we saw bunny when M was missing but not after.
There is definitely something up with Mr Bunny, but I’m not sure what yet. Mr. Wu had Binky, so seems like Pinky needs her own advisor. Besides Larry, I mean.
What a lovely place for Mehitabel to be poofed to.
Bob’s last line is genius!!
He was particularly proud of the line. He thought it up himself.
Doesn’t surprise me. My dissertation is actually on using stuffed animals in a classroom to reduce stress and bridge the gap between student, teacher, and subject matter. I use stuffed animals with my students (group home kids) and they will borrow ones to help with sleep or to help with stress in general.
Should have seen the last class I had to attend in AZ: I brought an otter, rhino, and honey badger as examples of toys I use with my students. By the end of this VERY stressful class, classmates were borrowing the toys to help them with stress. I had a big body-builder Navy guy cuddling the honey badger as he researched, another classmate holding a honey badger as she gave a presentation, and a few classmates borrowed the toys for overnights.
My…um…somewhat sizable collection of panda stuffies is definitely a stress reducer. I also, of course, have several cat, dog and horse stuffies.(I actually got several accounts at a bank because they were giving out horse stuffies, but dropped them when they started being banking jerks. I didn’t have to give my horsies back either.)