All five transformees stared at each other for a long time. Finally, the wife-turned-husband spoke. "Daniel?" he asked. "Is that you?"
Lower lip trembling, the husband-turned-wife managed a shaky "Y-yes."
"Mom?" the daughter-turned-son asked. "Dad? Did we...are we really...cats?"
The husband-turned-wife crumpled to the floor and began to sob. The two young daughters joined in, while the daughter-turned-son just stood there, not knowing what to do. Kneeling down, the wife-turned-husband placed his arm around his husband-turned-wife's shoulder. "Daniel," he said, "it's okay. We'll get through this; we can do it."
"But Mary!" Daniel sobbed. "Look at me! I'm a woman! And I'm an animal too! Look at you! How can we get through this if we're all mixed around from where we're supposed to be?"
Mary smiled. "Hey, being a woman didn't kill me, did it? I know you're not used to it, but it's hardly the end of the world. Besides, we're all pretty much in the same boat here. That means we have each other to turn to for help in dealing with this. We'll pull through."
"I don't wanna be a little girl again!" the age-regressed daughter cried. "I don't wanna be a girl at all!" the son-turned-daughter moaned. Mary sighed.
"Listen," he said. "I know you don't want to. None of us want what just happened. But it happened, and we can't change that now. What we can do is try to figure out how it happened, and find out if there's any way to undo it. But until we can do that, this is something we're all going to have to live with. We'll all help each other out any way we can, but one thing we're not going to do is sit around and mope about this, got it?"
Sniffling, the two girls nodded. "But..." Daniel moaned, "what about our identities? How will we get people to believe we are who we are when we're not?"
"I don't know," Mary said. Fishing around in his pants pocket, he pulled out his wallet and opened it.
"Hey, look!" he laughed. Everyone came over to see. The wallet was the same one that Daniel had previously had; the family portrait inside was different, though. It depicted their family as it was now, and the signatures at the bottom of the picture had changed. Daniel apparently now went by Danielle. Mary had become Mark. Karen, the daughter-turned-son, was Kevin now. Michelle, the age-regressed daughter, was the same, but her new twin sister had gone from Jonathan to Jennifer.
"Then..." Danielle muttered, "then...maybe...maybe everything else has...?"
Mark nodded. "Look," he said. "Our debit card is registered under my name now. I guess the world thinks we've always been the way we are. Which means, yeah..." He dug out a card in the back of the wallet. "Yeah. This is your ID card from your job, right?"
Danielle nodded. "Yes...but it's in your name..."
"Yeah." Mark thought for a moment. "Which means, I guess, that I have the job you used to have and you probably fill the housewife role I used to."
"What!?" Danielle snapped. "I don't want to be a housewife!"
"Hey," Mark replied, "if you feel that strongly about it, we can try and switch things around, but the fact is that, at the moment, I'm employed and you're not. Besides, a little domestic work didn't kill me and it certainly won't kill you."
Danielle hung her head. "I guess so."
"Kids," Mark said, "it's almost bedtime. You kids have school tomorrow, and I have work, and none of us may be able to get much sleep, so we'll go to bed early and get what sleep we can. Go on, bed time!"
The children nodded and went upstairs to get ready for bed. Mark and Danielle cleaned up the supper stuff and then went upstairs to go to bed as well.