They're so cute when they're sleeping, aren't they?



Meet my digital pet, a Power Palz cat.

The digital cat keychains must be pretty popular, judging by the fact that this was the last feline one the store had. (They also have dog and dinosaur digital pets to choose from.)

When Melody died, I bought a Furby that was on sale. Which drove Mark bananas, lol. This time, it was the digital pets on sale, and I sprang for one.

And proceeded to goof up setting the time... I thought it was going to give me the option of AM or PM. So the upshot is that when I thought I was setting the device for 6:30 PM, it was getting set for 6:30 AM instead. And once the pet is "born", you can't reset the clock on the device.

So I figured, what the heck. I'll just let this digipet live out its life span as it is. Maybe it'll sleep all day while I'm at work. Considering that when it's awake, every now and then it beeps for attention, that might not be a bad thing.

Once you set the clock, and the pet is born, you choose a name. There are 5 characters to choose from, so in honor of Bernie Parent, I named the digital cat "Berny". Interestingly enough, the program randomly chooses the pet's gender AFTER you pick the name. So now I have a girl digital cat named Berny whose birthday is December 11.

The pet actually changes appearance as it moves through different stages of life. It goes from baby (yesterday) to youngster (a few hours after birth), which is the stage it's in now. It will also have an adult stage, a senior stage, and eventually, as per the instructions, it will "leave you and go on to pet's paradise in the sky" (at which point the icon looks like a little winged angel).

In the meantime, when the pet is awake you have to check its status and, as needed, issue commands to give it food, water, or vitamins, play with it, exercise it, train it, or clean up after it. (And yes, there is a little droppings-shaped icon that appears when the pet has messed and must be picked up after.) There are also options for medicating the pet if it gets sick.

Which, unfortunately, is what I woke up to this morning. Due to my setting the clock wrong, the pet is nocturnal and it made a digital mess overnight. If digital messes aren't cleaned up promptly, the pet gets sick. So first thing this morning, I wound up cleaning up after and then pilling my little digital cat. Good thing that digital pets don't object to being medicated, lol.

And now Berny is sleeping. They're so cute when they sleep. :o)