Kyle waited for a few tense moments for the last of Abby's movements to subside, as he contemplated his current situation. He thought that it was unlikely that Mrs. Roxanne or anyone else would mess around with the device in a way that would help him out of this situation. If he wanted to regain control of his life, his best chance would be to escape from this cage and use the device to swap himself back into a human role.
As he idly gnawed on some wood chips, Mark realized that the longer he waited, the harder it would be to find the device. He had a pretty good idea of where it was at that moment, but anything could happen to it as time went on. The longer he waited, the more likely the device is moved somewhere else. He should try to escape tonight.
Mark felt a slight tingle throughout his body just as Abby had fully fallen asleep. Without anyone awake nearby, he was now free to do what he wanted, without any hamster instincts interfering. However, as Mark attempted to rise to his feet again, he discovered he couldn't lift his upper body very far. He experimentally wiggled his fingers, and found that his thumbs were stuck against his index fingers. He couldn't move them at all. It seemed that his physical restrictions would last as long as he occupied this role, regardless of who saw him.
After a moment's hesitation, Mark scurried around the cage to get a better feel for anything that might help him escape. He reckoned that the cage was about 15 feet long and 8 feet wide, and it took up almost a third of the room. The metal bars were spaced too close together to escape through, but far enough apart that he could poke an arm or his head through, if he needed to. The bars were covered in many nicks and scratches at about head-height, as if he'd been gnawing on them.
A large hamster wheel took up one corner of the cage, made of wire the same thickness of the bars. A feeding trough lie opposite of it, half-full of hamburger sized (and somehow more delicious smelling) food pellets. A nozzle poked into the cage adjacent to the trough, connected to the bottom of a transparent water-filled oil drum that was attached to the outside of the cage. The little mirror Mark had previously examined himself in was mounted above the trough, presumably to humiliate him by making him watch himself eating pet food.
Most importantly, the door to the cage used a single metal lever to open, and Mark saw Mrs. Roxanne do it twice to clean out the cage: once to get in, and once to get out! Mark crawled over to the door, used the bars of the cage to lift himself high enough to reach the lever, and pressed on it the same way Mrs. Roxanne did.
To his horror, he was unable to move the lever. Mark tensed up and pushed with his entire body, and the lever gave only a couple of inches, at most. He slammed his body into it, and lost his grip with the other hand and collapsed onto the wood chips, exhausted from the effort. Why was the action that Mrs. Roxanne did almost effortlessly next to impossible for him? Was this another way the device changed reality to accommodate his role, or was he just that much weaker?
Mark shifted his body into a more comfortable face-down lying position, feeling the grown-out hair of his body rub against the harsh surface of the wood chips. He felt a shiver run down his spine as he realized the true depth of his situation. This would be his life for a while. Possibly forever. Unable to do many of the most basic physical actions and completely at the mercy of people who saw him as nothing more than a pet. With that thought running through his mind, and physically exhausted, Mark drifted off to sleep.