These monsters aren’t much on the scary scale. They are gentle and friendly and extremely polite. The sensible cow looks very much like a puny cow, and in fact it used to be called the puny cow until one day when a gentle mud monster got worried, and said this was a bit unkind to them. When the puny cows thought about it, they agreed, and changed their name, but mainly they did it to stop the nice mud monster carrying on and getting upset.

The sensible cows are very sensible, because they chose to be as small as they are. Being small means there isn’t enough on one of them to get a steak, and they are too small for it to be worth milking them, so people leave them alone. There is just one problem: being small means it is very hard to see over things, and sometimes they have trouble getting over things as well.

Sadly, they have even more trouble in seeing or getting over things if they have just been stepped on by a gutter otter. Come to think of it, they also have trouble getting over being stepped on by a gutter otter.

Things that are better not said to a sensible cow: ‘I’ll be with you shortly’; or ‘That’s the long and the short of it’. After a gutter otter incident, never tell a sensible cow ‘Flattery will get you nowhere.’ And never mention pancakes or ironing!

ORIGINS: These are just ordinary Holstein cows which went and stood out in the rain until they shrank. Now they are small, they get cold quickly, which makes their black parts go purple and their white parts go deep mauve violet.

SIZE: About 2 centimetres long.

UNUSUAL THINGS: They often use tiny pogo sticks to jump over things that get in their way and also to get out of the way of gutter otters, but these cows usually only come out at night, so you hardly ever see them. They are hopeless with stairs, ladders and climbing ropes.

IS A THREAT TO: Cockroaches. Once upon a time, if they landed on a cockroach as they pogoed along, they would slip off and hurt themselves, but now they use specially spiky pogo sticks that go straight through the cockroaches. This is bad for the cockroaches, but good for the sensible cows.

USES: Great for pest control, and you can teach them to do tricks like rolling over, playing dead and walking the slack rope. Unfortunately, they are shy, so they won’t work in a circus, and they are too small to be seen anyhow. They are too big for a flea circus.

HATES: They get sad when people make jokes about their size, and they don’t like it when people tread on them. Careless gutter otters annoy them, because they don’t like being flat. They prefer to stay away from trolls. They get extremely unhappy whenever they hear people singing flat, and they really don’t like people who collect steam rollers or keep herds of gutter otters.

LIKES: They enjoy trampolines, climbing trees and paragliding. A few of them have tried ballooning, but they aren’t very keen on the idea. They will happily stay in a cage, so long as the bars are far enough apart to let them walk through while keeping gutter otters out. Their favourite music when they are cold is Mooed Indigo. To keep themselves from getting too cold, they wear little cloaks called capellas. When they go out to sing, they like to form a capella group. They feel very happy when they are looking at relief maps, they admire wrinkled skin, and they think that 3D movies and pup-up books are totally brilliant.

This monster is like a very small black and white cow on a pogo stick, with a sweet smile. Nothing else is looks like a cow and sings while jumping up and down on a pogo stick, and nothing else makes cockroaches run in all directions.