The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1909 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

After dealing with Simon’s embarrassment and extracting a promise that he would no longer drop his dirty clothing on the bedroom floor–I told him I’d bin it, and not in the laundry bin–I sent him off to play with the little ones while I invited the larger girls, all of whom were now home, to come and pick what they wanted from my wardrobe surplus.

Only Julie is as buxom as I am, so she got the pick of the crop. Sammi and Phoebe were too skinny and Jacquie didn’t fancy too much. She’s less girly than I am and given more to wearing trousers than skirts or dresses. I didn’t bother with Ingrid, she’s too short, though in the height stakes, she’s about the same as David, so shorter than I am. It always strikes me as anomalous that male hormones cause stunting in biological females, so lots of FtoM transsexuals are rather vertically challenged. The same doesn’t seem to happen t’other way round and certainly didn’t to me.

However, at twenty nine, I wasn’t going to grow any taller, which didn’t worry me one bit. Five foot six or seven was tall enough although Simon towered over me anyway at over six foot tall. Danny was catching me up, being about an inch shorter and Livvie and Trish are about the same height, though I’m aware that Trish’s Y-chromosomes could cause her to leave her sister behind anytime after about twelve. We’d have to wait and see, because there’s nothing we can do.

The down side of adoption is that unless you know the family, you can never be sure of how big your kids will grow or how fat they might become–it’s a bit like buying a puppy, and the little runt with the cute bark grows up to be measured in hands and eats postmen, with a bark which sounds reminiscent of the primordial scream of a tyrannosaurus. He loves to show you his new trick of carrying the baby around in his mouth and you pray he doesn’t cough or bark while you find something to eat, and swallow your youngest, whole.

I was just closing up my wardrobe when the kitten scrambled up a coat and climbed out onto my shoulder, giving me a purp and rubbing her head against my ear. Why do they always have to dribble–and how did it get in my ear? Then when Kiki barked at something, Bramble leapt off my shoulder and into the top of my wardrobe, leaving take off marks on my shoulder as she went.

The stupid dog barked again and the kitten buried herself in the top of my wardrobe and it took me half an hour to find her. At one point I felt like borrowing one of the decorative swords Tom has hanging on the wall of the lounge, and begun poking the clothes in the wardrobe to see if any miaowed. Then just as I was about to give up hope of ever finding her, I was standing on a chair poking about in the top of the cupboard and she shot out from the bottom, entangled with a pair of barely black tights.

She hit the chair leg with such force the chair wobbled and so did I, culminating in me grasping at the straw of a sliding door which of course pulled off in my hand and deposited both of us on the carpet with quite a clatter, thereby frightening the feline, who shot under the bed, spat at me and hared off down the stairs.

I was unable to move, the sliding door had trapped me against the bedside cupboard and somehow got itself jammed under the edge of the bed. I was also very uncomfortable. I yelled for Simon, but he was busy watching something in the lounge and the television was on rather loud.

I screamed and banged on the floor but no one came to find me. My arm was now so uncomfortable that my eyes were watering and I could no longer feel my fingers. I recalled the story of that chap who got his arm trapped under the boulder and he had to amputate it with his own Swiss Army Knife. I couldn’t even reach the emery board in the drawer of my bedside unit.

It was Danny who found me some twenty minutes later, by which time I was verging on hysterical. He rushed off to find Simon and Tom. I yelled as they freed me and then I yelled at them for having the television on so loud. I had a massive bruise on my left arm and I wanted to go to bed.

Of course Simon had to try to repair the sliding door and it was only when I cried as I asked him to leave it, that he realised how shaken I was. He offered me a cuddle, but all I wanted to do was try and rest my arm and neck, both of which hurt abysmally.

Trish came up to see me, but I asked her to go and get the other little ones to bed. I was asleep before them. The next morning, early, I woke with Trish lying alongside me, her little hands on my bruised arm. It was still in full Technicolor, but the pain had eased and I could move my arm more freely. She’d come in and healed on me for a couple of hours in case I wanted to get rid of the cat. I was tempted, but realised that small dumb animals do small dumb things–one of which was taking a flying leap onto the breakfast table as Livvie was pouring cream on her cereal. I don’t know who was more surprised, Livvie, as the cat landed in her dish–or the cat who got half a carton of cold single cream over her head.

I took great delight in washing off the foolish feline in the kitchen sink, though it took three of us to hold her down while I sprayed her with warm water. It did, however, teach her to keep away from the table and the work surfaces.

We had to get Maureen in to fix the sliding door and she suggested next time I get a small step ladder to go mountaineering, not a dressing table stool. She also told me that had I left the cat, she would have found her own way out, probably after a short snooze and that rattling her dish would have provided much greater incentive for her to leave than trying to grab her–that would be like hide and seek–and cats love it.

I began to understand the woman who knocked the cat into the wheelie bin.