Petlings

The first update of February, 2010, brought a new feature to players: petlings. Petlings are small bundles of fluff that grow up to become either cats or dogs. Kittens are first available at level 5 and cost 1,000 coins; puppies are available at level 10 and cost 1,200 coins. You can only raise one petling (from fluff-stage to adulthood) at a time, and they need to be fed daily. Once you purchase a petling from the Garden Center, it goes into your inventory; at home, you can pull your petling out of your inventory and release it into any room of your house. A box will come up, asking you to name your new petling; names cannot be changed once they're entered as of this time.

Petlings come in several different colors (black, white, blue, grey, light brown, brown, dark brown and pink), with a variety of different appendages to make each petling almost unique. Eyes, ears, tails and legs can all vary from petling to petling. The second update of February introduced colored biscuits (which cost 2 PF cash) that you could feed your petling to change its color, with each biscuit colored to correspond to the color your petling would become upon eating. Currently, there's no way to customize your petling's appearance otherwise.

Cats and dogs eat different things--cats will request either Salami (20 coins), Ebi Sushi (30 coins), Milk (75 coins) or Strawberry Milk (45 coins), while dogs request a Tamago Sushi (20 coins), Rare Steak (30 coins), Sandwich (20 coins) or Bone (100 coins). When your petling is hungry, a bubble will appear over its head, featuring one of the foods it eats. You can feed the petling any food item in your inventory, but only the food the petling is requesting will satisfy it. If your petling goes for three days without food, it will run away. Once your petling has run away, you can either pay a coin fee to have it retrieved, or post a status update to your Facebook feed to have your friends find it for you. Putting your petling into your inventory does not prevent it from running away.

Once your petling has grown into adulthood, you're then able to buy another petling. As of this writing, you're limited to owning five petlings at any given time, regardless of species. Once a petling has reached adulthood, you have the option of selling it for 333 coins. Petlings are not recyclable.

The third update of February introduced a third variety of petling: a tiger. The tiger petling could be purchased from either the Garden Center or the Cash Shop for 25 PF cash, and was raised in much the same way as the cat and dog petlings. (10% of the purchase price of PF cash items in the WWF collection, including the tiger petling, went to benefit the WWF.) The tiger petling eats Ebi Sushi (30 coins), Rare Steak (30 coins), Chicken Drumstick (100 coins) and Lamb Shank (20 coins). Included in this update was a seventh color-changing biscuit: orange.

The update of February brought a fourth petling breed: a coyote. The coyote petling could be purchased in the Garden Center for 2,000 coins, and had the same diet as the tiger. This update also introduced petling beds--baskets for your petlings to sleep in. Petlings largely ignored these baskets, but they were nice decorations.

On March 8th, Playfish released lion petlings that cost 2,500 coins. The lion ate the same things as coyote and tiger. Updates included random fur and eye colors now for the lion, coyote and the tiger.

The last update of March gave players a chance to buy a baby lamb for 20 PF Cash.