Welcome to the 2nd instalment from Tooty Nolan's 'Fanfare for the Common Hamster'©.
The Receptionist, Flotti Pañuelo, who also doubled as the receptionist for Doctor Growbag at the local surgery, looked up as Felicity skidded her machine to halt before her desk.
“Oh, I’m not sure that’s allowed,” she said, allowing her myopic gaze to linger upon the long black rubber mark on the otherwise pristine floor, “What do you want?”
“My sister,” gasped Felicity, who, despite her youth, was breathing heavily following such monumental exertion.
Flotti was usually a pleasant type who wouldn’t say boo to a bat; but there was something about the young dormouse’s tail that offended her greatly. Perhaps it was envy: Her own tail was short, even by hamster standards, and she kept it hidden beneath the multiple folds of her summer skirt and a very sturdy pair of ex-military knickers.
“I suppose this sister has a name?” She snapped in a very un-Flotti Pañuelo sort of way.
“Joan Bugler.” Felicity replied, still breathless.
The name seemed to ring a bell somewhere in the darker recesses of Flotti’s memory. It fairly shook out the underlay of her mental carpet. It blew a high-pressure jet through the cobwebs of her cerebral flue.
“Isn’t she…? She began. Then her dexterous fingers flew across the keypad of her computer. “Yes – I thought so.”
She then turned the monitor around so that Felicity could see the extremely toothy smile of Joan Bugler as she peered from behind the thickest pair of lenses known to hamsterdom, which pretty much proved conclusively that she was unmistakably a hamster.
“Still want to see your sister?” The inference was unmistakable.
“We’re adopted.” Felicity found herself explaining for the millionth time, “Our mum’s an immigrant Gerbil from some distant sandy place. She took us on in order to receive state handouts from our over-generous socialist government. But in time she learned to love us. Now she thinks my tail is lovely, and I have the personality of saint: And Joan’s cheek pouches send her into rhapsodies. We’re all Hamster British citizens, I
swear on the little green book of the Saint of All Hamsters!”
Flotti accepted this with good grace. “Fourth floor.” She said, “Head-Shrinkers department. Run quickly – their funding is about to expire.”
***
Well it didn’t take more than a moment for Felicity to park her scooter, and rush headlong up the stairs. But by the time that she reached the fourth floor, vertigo had reared its ugly head, and she fairly staggered toward the swing doors that flapped gently below a sign that read ‘Cast aside your pathetic presumptions all ye who enter here’.
Felicity would have been impressed, but now even altitude sickness seemed to be kicking in, and it took an effort of will for her to push the door open.
***
Meanwhile, in the Head-Shrinkers main laboratory (less-well, but more accurately, known as The National Institute for Psychic Rodent Research), Felicity’s sister, Joan, was undergoing a vigorous test that had been designed to push her to her limits, and possibly beyond.
Her examiners, Doctor Rambling Bramble, and his sweet young assistant, Primrose Pickles, watched through a one-way mirror as Joan’s furry orange face contorted with mental effort.
The lab assistant, Freddy Ringworm, a recent graduate of Saint Dunces, Poxford, held up a playing card. It was turned away from Joan.
This made it impossible for her to identify it by any means other than telepathy.
“Jock.” Joan said hesitantly, “The Jock of Spuds.”
Freddy’s whiskers vibrated slightly. It was his equivalent of a raised eyebrow. “Correcto!” he shouted in much the same manner as a Spanish game show host would. “Muy bien!” he added for effect.
This seemed to settle Joan’s nerves. She stopped creasing her face so intensely that it made her appear ghastly and obnoxious, and began to relax.
Freddy held up another card.
This time Joan didn’t hesitate. “The Thirteen of Wanks.” She blurted.
***
In their little cubicle behind the mirror, Doctor Rambling Bramble and Primrose were ecstatic.
“Oh, Miss Pickles: Just in the nick of time: A true telepath. Now we’ll get some more funding from the government. Now if we can just turn this into some kind of weapon everything will be fine. We’ll have enough funding to see me into early retirement.”
“Oh dear,” Primrose replied, “If we were to do that – then I’m afraid that I would have to tender my resignation. I don’t approve of warfare and subjugation of non-hamsters. And I believe that early retirement is the bolt-hole of the terminally inept. ”
This shook the doctor to his core. Although he was far older than his assistant, he’d been known to post many love sonnets to her upon the internet. She was unaware of this, of course: She didn’t believe in computers; and liked doing sums in her head instead.
“Well when I say ‘weapon’, what I really mean is…. ‘tool’. And when I speak of retirement, I, of course, mean that it will give me the opportunity to do voluntary work with the…ah…poor and needy orphans, and their sick mothers.”
But Primrose wasn’t listening: She’d spotted Felicity reel into the examination room, staggering and swooning all over the place.
“I say,” boomed Bramble when he noticed this too, “who the fluff is that? She’s obviously inebriated beyond belief: Someone have her locked up!”
But Primrose could recognize a bad case of vertigo at a hundred paces.
“There,” she turned to the professor angrily, “I told you that having this lab on the fourth floor was stupid: Rodents don’t like heights. And poor looked-down-upon dormice are particularly badly effected.”
“Are you sure? Didn’t they used to live in the tops of tall corn stalks in the olden days?” Bramble argued as gently as possible.
“That was Harvest mice.” Primrose retorted, “And they didn’t like it much either. It was persistent vomiting that drove them to create an advanced society, and come down from the corn to live like other rodents.”
***
Meanwhile, whilst this exchange of information was taking place, licity had spotted her sister, and had barged her way past Freddy.
“Joan,” she yelled, “do you realize what time it is?”
It was a rhetorical question: Joan didn’t believe in clocks. She didn’t much go for mirrors either. She felt life could do without such complexities. In any case, she had her mother and sister to tell when to get up, and when to go to bed. She just hoped that, one day, a husband would be so accommodating.
“Mister Timber will chew on his privates with rage if you’re late just one more time.” Felicity yelled as she dragged her larger, and slightly weighty, sister from her seat, “And I don’t know what my form teacher will say when I give him another lame excuse. Come on, girl, get your arse into gear.”
Joan could recognize a good argument when she heard one. Looking up at the mirror she said, “Sorry: Gotta go. Call me if you want anymore back-to-front cards read for you.”