Creative Ways Of Adopting Pets!

However, I've noticed several new classes of owners, people who adopt pets based on criteria other than the pets' looks, names or Battledome stats. Here is a list of the most interesting criteria, which I gathered by canvassing the people on the Pound Neoboard. I hope you find it as intriguing as I do!

Pets With A Certain Birthday

Many people want to adopt Neopets whose birthdays fall on specific dates or ranges. For instance, I recently saw one person on the Pound Neoboard who wanted to adopt a pet that was born on April 1, from any year. She planned to morph it into a Blumaroo and dress it in the Blumaroo Jester outfit, compete with Jester Hat and Jester Shirt. She thought this would be an awesome April Fool's-themed pet, and I had to nod and agree!

Many other people want to adopt Neopets from a certain year. Pets born in Year 1 of the Neopian calendar are very highly sought after, for example, as well as being very rare. One player confessed that he wanted a Neopet from Year 7 just because 7 is his lucky number. 3 of his 4 pets were born in Year 7, and he was looking to trade his 4th pet for just one more Year 7 pet. I smiled at his determination, and wished him much luck!

Pets With Multiple Trophies

Many people are ambitious artists, and seek to adopt a well-trophied pet in order to add their own trophies to the pet. I was absolutely agog when I saw one pet that had 14 trophies, and then the owner admitted that he'd gotten the pet when the pet already had 12 trophies. I congratulated him on earning more trophies anyway, since it was obvious that he loved his new pet and planned to keep entering his pet in the Beauty Contest!

Other people have ambitions of winning book awards, and want to adopt a pet that's already read hundreds of books. I had to encourage these people in their pursuit, since it can cost millions of Neopoints to land on the high score list!

Pets With Great Customizations

This criteria makes me smile. Many people adopt pets that aren't even their favorite species or colors, but they look amazing when customized. For instance, one of my Neofriends hates Darigan pets, but makes one exception for Darigan JubJubs. She insists that seeing her tiny purple furball glowering at her makes her giggle, and she has a lot of fun customizing it. It's cute, as JubJubs generally are, but also fierce, with sharp fangs and red eyes. She claims that her JubJub sparks her imagination, and after seeing its customization change week after week, I had to agree!

I never really liked the Lutari before, but after zapping my lab rat into a Desert Lutari, I became a total Lutari convert! I've zapped my lab rat multiple times since then, but I've always regretted it, and I promised myself that someday I'd own a Desert Lutari again. I created a Blue Lutari on its birthday this year, and dressed it in my Desert Lutari clothes. He looks quite dashing in his new duds! It's almost as nice as having a genuine Desert Lutari!

Pets That Start With Specific Letters

A new trend on the Pound Neoboard is when people try to adopt pets whose names fall within a certain alphabetical range. For instance, I recently met someone who wanted an Ice Hissi with a name landing somewhere between the B and F range, because she wanted the Hissi to be organized between her Cybunny and her Kiko on her user lookup. I had to grin at her fastidiousness! I have the same neurosis. My side account has a Pea Chia and a Grape Chia, and since their names start with a B and a C, they're always situated next to each other on my side account's user lookup. I love the way that they're paired next to each other, no matter which pets come and go on that account!

Clothing Unclothed Pets

One trend that I've discovered on the Pound Neoboard is people who seek to adopt painted, unclothed pets in order to dress them in their paint brush clothes and give them away. I think this is a lovely and creative way of giving away paint brush clothes, especially for those people who zap their pets with the Secret Laboratory Ray and have a lot of leftover paint brush clothing in their Closets. I do this myself! I have three accounts' worth of clothing that I've gotten from the Secret Laboratory Ray, and I find great satisfaction in giving away the clothes, since I'll never use them. I mean, what is someone supposed to do with five Silver Usul Headbands?

Story Potential

There are plenty of people on Neopets who are inspired by more than expense and rarity. For instance, I know of one person whose Royalboy Draik languishes on his side account while a Water Kacheek has adventures on his main account. And by adventures, I mean multiple stories, many of which have been submitted to the Neopian Times. He adopted his Water Kacheek because it stirs his creative juices, and after reading his remarkable stories, I had to applaud him! Thank goodness the Kacheek ended up with someone who truly loves her!

Renaming Potential

TNT has stated in a previous Editorial that if pet name changes occur, it will probably be a NC-only option. I was heartened by their reply! Rather than stating flat-out that name changes will never happen, they acknowledged that name changes might occur in the future, and Neopians the world over were giddy with excitement. That's why a lot of people are adopting pets with bad names, pets that they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford, such as a badly named Stealth Eyrie that they plan to rename later. I look forward to renaming pets as well! I have a Faerie Pteri with a rather atrocious name, riddled with underscores and numbers, and I'd love to have the option of changing his name!

Anticipation Of New Colors

I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of Cybunnies, but I adopted one a few days ago because I'm looking forward to Polka Dot Cybunnies being released someday! The thought of the creamy white fur of the Cybunny being speckled with colorful little dots just seems so lovely, happy and fun! I know of another user who has an Aisha on her side account, and she's waiting for Stealthy Aishas to be released someday. Similar to me and my antipathy towards most Cybunnies, this player has an antipathy towards most Aishas, yet she's looking forward to Stealthy Aishas because she thinks the daintiness of the Aisha combined with the shadowy looks of the Stealth Paint Brush would culminate in a truly spectacular-looking pet. After hearing her reasoning, I had to agree, and wished her much luck that the Stealthy Aishas will be as amazing as she hopes!

Nickname Potential

There are lots of people, myself included, who love to give nicknames to their beloved pets. For instance, one player adopted a pet with an unusually long and scatterbrained name, but nicknamed him "Prince." This is a new category of people, people who see their pets as being their nicknames rather than their full names. One player that I spoke to admitted that she adopted a pet named after her favorite rock band, even though the pet's name included a few numbers and underscores at the end. I had to applaud her! She probably saved the pet from languishing in the Pound! And it's always nice to meet people on this site who aren't name snobs.

There's even a special movement of people who want TNT to implement pet nicknames on our user lookups. For instance, a pet named "000678helloworld77" might show up as "Hello," depending on the whims of its owner. I think this would rock! Let's keep bombarding the Neopian Times Editorial with requests, okay?

Name Pairings

There are some people who try to adopt or trade for certain real words that go together, such as "Bride" and "Groom," or "Happy" and "Sad." I think this is a creative way of sprucing up one's account! Rather than being jealous, I'd be quite thrilled to spot these unique and wonderful pet names together on someone's account. They must represent years and years of pet trading!

Height And Weight

There are some highly desired glitched pets that have zero height and zero weight, according to some people on the Pound Neoboard. I've never seen such pets myself, but I have to admit, such a pet would be very appealing! What a lovely and ephemeral pet to own! If I had such a pet, I would probably paint it into Faerie, something that floats in the air on diaphanous wings.

Weird Petpets

Back when trading pets was new, the rule that pets shouldn't be adopted or traded for their Petpets didn't yet exist. What ended up was people passing around pets that had weird Petpets, such as one pet whose Petpet was a juice straw, or another pet whose Petpet was an eraser. This phenomenon was due to a glitch several years ago where players could assign any item to be their pet's Petpet. Though the glitch has long been fixed since then, and though we are no longer allowed to trade pets based on their Petpets, I've seen several pets up for adoption who still have unusual items as Petpets, such as notebooks and oranges, rather than real Petpets. I'd love to adopt such weird and quirky pets!

Themed Accounts

I was glad to meet people on the Pound Neoboard who had my same obsession of creating themed accounts. For instance, my side account is all about winter, with a winter-themed lookup and several Ice pets. I also have a Royalgirl Bori there, whose blue fur-lined cloak is a luxurious, frosty testament to my love of all things winter.

Many players that I spoke to admitted that they also have accounts that are purely Darigan-themed, Meridell-themed, or even Grey-themed. One person admitted that she came up with the idea of having a Halloween-themed account first, then thought of what pets would go along with her idea. Basically, she coded a gorgeous and truly dark Halloween user lookup, decided on a Halloween-themed gallery, created a fictional story that would interweave her pets' histories, and THEN decided which Halloween pets she wanted to adopt or create. What an interesting way of acquiring pets! Usually people adopt their dream pets first, and THEN modify their user lookups to reflect their pride over their new pets.

Grab Their Clothes

Many people on the Pound Neoboard admitted that they were looking to adopt painted pets of any name that have removable clothes. These people would then strip the pets of their clothes and pound the naked pets. For instance, I've seen people trying to trade their pets for badly-named pets of Royal hue, whose glittering golden clothes the people would remove. They'd then pound the pets, bereft of their Royal accoutrements.

This made me sad! I have a Royalgirl Peophin that I'm trying to trade, but I'd hate for her to be stripped of her golden jewelry and then dumped in the Pound. Now I keep an eye out, making sure that she's someone's true dream pet, and not just clothing fodder.

Pets That Are Useful

I used to belong to a class of generous players who lent their pets to other players. For instance, we lent out pets with certain diseases (such as Sneezles), or pets with avatar potential (such as Coconut JubJubs). Nowadays, I find more joy in adopting out such pets than lending them. So whenever I zap a pet that's useful to the Neopian community, such as a Halloween Lupe or a Snow Uni, I race to the Avatar Neoboard and post a thread, asking other lenders whether they'd like to adopt the newly zapped pet and lend it out to other people. I get no shortage of replies! I'm glad there are so many kind lenders on Neopets! And it's so nice to know my pets are going to be useful for years to come, instead of rotting on someone's neglected side account!

Adopting Pets To Give Away

This final, creative way to adopt pets is by far my favorite. I love to adopt well-named pets from the Neopian Pound, zap them into interesting and rare colors, and give them away. I don't get anything out of it except for the satisfaction of knowing that my pets will eventually end up with people who truly love them. For instance, I once zapped a Purple Peophin, released her into the Pound, and then joyously discovered that she'd been adopted by a person who lavishly customized her with items from the NC Mall. The glorious result was a glowing purple-and-pink customization that made me gasp with wonder! I grinned, happy to learn that one of my pets had turned out to be someone else's dream pet!

Similarly, there are those generous and kindhearted Neopians who use their Secret Laboratory Ray to zap only badly-named pets. They hope that by adopting a badly-named pet and zapping it into a rare color, they'll be giving the pets a second chance at being adopted. I think these people are awesome and sweet!

Conclusion

The typical reasons why someone would adopt a pet usually have to do with the pet's looks, its name, or its Battledome stats. However, I hope this article proved that there are amazing new ways to value a pet! I was quite inspired by the creative ways in which people have learned to embrace their pets, and I'm even going to create a Vandagyre when my birthday rolls around. The thought of owning a pet whose birthday matches mine makes me smile with glee!

Thanks, my fellow Neopians, for reading my article! And thank you for replying to my threads! Have a great week, and may you always love your adopted pets in amazing and spectacular ways!