The Truth Behind the Meep

Meepits arrived in limited quantities at first; everyone seemed to want one. Some Neopets would be seen sitting outside the Spooky Petpets shop, waiting until the stock of Meepits was replenished.

Nobody but the gossipers saw it coming when the Meepits first began to show signs of a rebellion. First they disobeyed their Neopet owners, then they insisted on eating only Juppie Juice, and now they are beginning to write angry letters to their owners with lists of their demands.

My Eyrie, Tra1lBlazer, her Feepit Speckle, and I looked into this subject and found that there were some surprising ideas about all of this.

First we visited Jennifer, a Shoyru who had a poorly behaved Meepit.

"When I give him Juppie Juice, he shakes his head. When I ask him what he wants, he points to the juice. Once, I had a lot of Neopoints so I decided to paint him; I found the Blue Petpet Paint Brush he always wanted, and he just shook his head and pointed to the exact same one behind it," she told us, baffled. Then we went to interview Jell-E, her Meepit.

"She doesn't understand anything about Meepits," he spoke through translation from Speckle, who understands Feepit, Neopian, and Meepit. "She thought that it would be nice to have a Petpet for show, especially a Meepit, because we were so rare in the beginning. The first week she had me, she wanted to dress me up in a crown and a thick coat to make me look like a king. Then, when she finally got around to taking care of me like any other Petpet, she still didn't understand that we Meepits like to pick out things for ourselves. I act the way I do to try to show her that."

Next, we found David, a Blumaroo who is the proud owner of a Meepit that never talked back to him or anything. David was even named "The Best Owner of a Meepit" by Petpet Weekly.

"It's just, I don't know," David said about his win and his Petpet, "I heard the rumours, and I thought that maybe if there was any truth to this theory, then maybe if I treated the little guy nicely, he wouldn't do whatever it is the Meepits are planning to do to the Neopets. So I just gave him what he asked for; I studied the Meepit language for three years to ensure I got nothing wrong, and he's just a happy kind of guy. To be truthful, I didn't even ask for a Meepit in the first place. It was just a gift."

Then we decided to ask Brian, David's Meepit what he thought of David's ownership. The Meepit was quite pleased.

"David really gets me," Brian said. "I've heard of a bunch of Petpets whose owners just added them to be a little decoration for the pet lookup, but he seems to understand that a Petpet needs to be liked by a Neopet as much as a Neopet needs to be liked by an owner."

Even Sadie, Brian's Moach, was content here.

"Brian is happy to have me around," she clicked. We had to bring in a translator for this part, because since Speckle unfortunately doesn't have a Petpetpet, she had no idea what Sadie was saying. "He pets me, he gives me food and water, and he cut a little piece of cloth from his bed to make me a sort of sleeping bag. And if Brian is happy, then I'm happy; Petpet and Petpetpet share emotions if they're treated the same way, which we must be."

Thinking we knew a little about the subject from interviewing two Meepits with different behaviours and their owners, we presented our information to Doctor Thomas Peophin, who has been studying Petpets, their owners, and their behaviour for years. He compiled all the information, added a few sprinklings of his own experience with the Meepits, and came up with a logical conclusion.

"The truth is that the Meepits are not evil, as everybody thinks," Dr. Peophin stated. "The truth is that instead they are the voice of all Petpets. Petpets are generally thought of as decorations to show what good owners they have or as a gift given by owners to show how nicely they treat their Neopets. The Petpets, until now, have been oblivious to the fact that apart from food and water, many of them have received barely anything from their owners. The Meepit, on the other hand, has never thought otherwise, and it doesn't behave to show its owner that it wants to make its own decisions. Some Meepits never listen to their owners, to show that the Neopet never listens to it. Think about what would happen if you were, with no warning, taken from your home and forced to live in the exact opposite with only enough food and water to survive and no toys or pets. It's precisely the same thing for a Meepit made to live in Faerieland or an Anubis prancing around Terror Mountain."

Here I winced; we live on Terror Mountain, and my Ixi has a pet Anubis. I hoped she was happy inside.

"The Meepits are the voice of all the Petpets; they are saying that they need to be happy in order to behave well, much like any Neopet who was barely fed wouldn't be all that happy with its owners."

So then I asked him a question.

"What should we do to stop the Petpets from acting so poorly because their Neopets don't treat them like equals?"

"I say you gather up 10 of every species of Petpet, all poorly behaved (it may take some work), and ask them show what they would like to improve in their lives with their Neopets."

So it took us three weeks, but we were able to find 10 poorly behaved members of each Petpet species (Angelpuss was the hardest, because as the name suggests, they're as good as angels all the time) and asked them to share what they wanted.

99.9% agreed that they would like treats, a comfy bed, and a Petpetpet, while the 0.01% was a frightened little Turdle who drew a zapping at the Petpet Laboratory with a slash through it.

So we told the owners -- and we're telling you now -- that the reason the Meepits are the way they are is that they are generally treated as decorations, like almost all Petpets, and they are just the voice that spoke up first in a room of those who all agree. So why don't you go over to the Petpet Supplies shop and pick out something nice for your little Petpet today? I’m sure they’d like it. :)