How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
For a heartbeat he felt most peculiar, as if thick, black treacle were running through his veins in place of blood; then the shape of the world changed. Everything became huge and towering. It seemed as if the old woman herself was now a giantess, and his vision was blurred and confused. (8.165)
Tristran's first experience being magically transformed into an animal is not a pleasant one. It's weird and disorienting for him to be shrunken into a mouse, though it seems like he doesn't really perceive the nature of the change at first, just that his sense of scale got all weird. Maybe he doesn't have enough brainpower to process it all at once, since mice have tiny brains.
Quote #8
Madame Semele had the bird in front of her now. She touched its plumed head with her glass flower, and it flowed and shifted and became a young woman, in appearance not too much older than Tristran himself, with dark, curling hair and furred, catlike ears. (9.51)
We know by now that Madame Semele likes keeping her slave in bird-form for most of the time, as a punishment for giving away one of her prized items for sale (which, in a twist, is the very same flower she's now holding to perform the spell). Later we learn that the slave has been enslaved for over sixty years, so it's kind of amazing that she hasn't undergone all the changes and transformations of old age. We'll chalk it up to magic.
Quote #9
"There is something of the dormouse in him still […] Sometimes I wonder if she transforms people into animals, or whether she finds the beast inside us, and frees it." (10.18)
Lady Una's observation is an intriguing one. Along these lines, what kind of animal do you think you'd be transformed into?