One might look at Catalina sitting on Rhoda in the previous comic and think "ah, that was set up for this transformation! What a clever and handsome fellow, that Dan. We should make him our leader."
The truth is, however, that I originally planned to have Catalina be standing, and was even thinking how it was a rare opportunity to show the player standing during a form change without relying on the player pieces. When I sat down to work on the comic and looked at the previous comic for reference, I was reminded of where Catalina was, and... Well...
Quite frankly, it would have been a crime against comedy to not follow up on that.