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Living the Dream, Part 2 By Finn Panther

The first was a sense of temperature. It was warm and comfortable - not at all unusual for waking. Curled up pleasantly in his bed, wrapped all up in the comfortable covers, wrapped up in the sunshine that spilled from the window - and we mustn't forget, wrapped up in fur as well. Astonishing, dismaying fur.

It had consistently been his second thought of the day - every day, for every week that he had been here. Intruding thoughts of his new life - absurd thoughts of being some manner of feline - and all of it being irrefutably true.

It was a lot to take in during your first moments of wakefulness, and Joseph had come to cherish the split second of warmth when he first woke up. Wrapped up, safe in his bed, he could ignore the entire world. If only for a split second.

With a hefty sigh he left the safety of his bed. It didn't do to oversleep in this house, and that was true regardless of which universe you were in. His family might be animals now, but his obnoxious siblings and pestering parents were the same as ever.

Joseph's routine hadn't changed since his first day here. The first thing he did was briefly stare at himself in the mirror. How could he be so strange? With a long tail that swished around, and tall, feline ears, and spots that were so naturally placed, it almost as though it was normal for people to have spots.

It never took long to freak himself out by doing this, and for the rest of the day he would fervently avoid any mirrors of any kind. After this he couldn't dress himself quickly enough, and while cothing didn't feel particularly nice against his fur, the welcome tradeoff was covering up as much of it as possible. Out of sight, out of mind.

Thankfully both his normal self and his animal self had incredibly similar taste in wardrobe - although his clothes now seemed to be drastically skewed to compensate for his vision. It was one of the first things he noticed after recovering from the initial shock - the world was blue. Rather, he noticed more blue things - blue, and also its neighboring colors. Some things did come across as very slightly yellowed, but nothing further registered. Orange and red had become shades of grey, and properly colored vision had become one more check mark of things against this new universe.

Aside from the dramatic loss of half the spectrum of colors to work with, his vision was the least of his problems - because the most of his problems, the one thing that he hated more than anything else? Pants. Pants had become the bane of his existence.

It seemed that animal Joseph preferred pants with a pull through hole for his spotted tail. Supposedly this was a normal affair for Furres (as they were supposedly called), and Joseph simply couldn't understand why. Somehow he was asked to pull up his pants half-way or so, and then thread the tip of his tail through the tiny little hole, and then pull his tail through while he finished pulling up his pants. Or, something like that?

It was a long, uncomfortable affair (you try pulling an entire tail through a small hole, against the grain of your fur - all while having had a tail for no more than a day or two!), and it was a task that Joseph was very bad at. However, in truth, it was no more difficult than anything else he had learned in the past few weeks - difficult and stressful, and also incredibly strange.

And as for learning things - that was always the fourth thing that happened in Joseph's days. Wake up, freak out, get dressed - and learn. Apparently his family had undertaken a grand quest to reteach their kin how to be an animal. Just downstairs mother was waiting with a brush, and in no time they were bickering and miscommunicating, all over the ''normal'' way to brush one's fur.

''So... you move the brush... like this?''

''Yes, it's pretty self explan- no, no, not so hard. You'll pull out all your fur.''

It took Joseph some effort not to reply with, ''Fine by me - I'm not supposed to have fur in the first place!'' But apparently his animal family didn't like that sort of attitude.

''Okay, so I'll go gently, like this?'' After an affirming nod, Joseph continued, ''But at this rate, it'll take forever!''

''Not once you're practiced. And you'll remember that hygiene is especially important. There's no better way to put people off than with a mangy coat, and shedding is completely- you know what, no. I can't do this. Joseph, this is all so terrible - I can't believe this happened to my baby boy!!''

Great, here come the waterworks - and sure enough, his new mother promptly had him wrapped in a tight embrace. Joseph still wasn't comfortable being so close to another Furre, but the aging leopardess did have a point. From her perspective this must be a great and terrible tragedy - no mother deserved to lose her son to a rogue case of amnesia (at least, that was the working story), and to be fair, Joseph knew that his real mother would be reacting in the same way. So, if nothing else, at least this universe was consistent - even if it did leave Joseph in the uncomfortable position of having to console his panicking mother, when shouldn't it be the other way around?

The entire affair had him thinking about home, about his real family - and about the alternate version of himself. Was he also stuck in the wrong universe? Someone else who was equally lost, equally trapped, and equally alone? Joseph liked to think so. Somehow it made him less afraid. Maybe he really was out there, paving his way in an equally strange world. And maybe he was having better luck than Joseph was. Because no matter how hard Joseph tried, no matter how well he learned to do things, and no matter how well he could console his distraught mother - he knew that he would never belong here. He would never be at home.

Every time he thought about it made him more melancholy. Every time he thought about his situation, and every time he thought about his alternate self - the more he desperately wished that the other Joseph was doing better. He felt that at least one of them deserved to be happy.