I got some very bad news about a close friend this week. So when I walked through my front door, the first thing I did was hug my dog. Then I curled up on the sofa and buried my face in nice soft kitty fur.

The first part – about my friend – was all too real. But the “dog” I hugged was a VKC Portuguese water dog, and the kitty sofa came from MnM Designs.

I used to think it was strange and possibly even a bit – well, WRONG – to get emotionally attached to pixels. Certainly there are many people in my real life who would never understand if I told them that hugging a cyber dog or kitty brought me comfort.

That’s just it, though. My cyber pets DO bring me comfort and warmth and joy.

I used to think it was their realism; the VKC dogs are amazingly detailed and scripted with wonderfully-done “pet me” animations that are different for each breed. The kitty sofa has a lashing tail and eyes that blink, and one of its three animations lets you stretch out on its back, rest your own head against the kitty head and hug its neck.

But one of the least realistic Second Life pets I have is a following bulldog – I think I paid 20L for it. It’s shaped strangely and solid black with almost no textures; if it didn’t say “bulldog” in the description, I’m not sure I’d know that’s what it was. I had it out one day when I was going through my inventory and set it to follow me, then forgot about it… until I decided to sail around my island.

The bulldog apparently was scripted not to go into Linden water, because it stopped at the edge and stood there as if it were watching me sail away. I thought that was kind of cute, nothing more.

But as I completed my lap of the island and drew close to shore again, the dog jumped into the boat and capsized it.

The logical part of my mind knows that this was due to scripting. The bulldog’s script moved it after me until it detected water. Then when the script picked up that I was within range again, it quickly moved the dog to my side. The boat capsizing? Not sure about that; probably something to do with the dog being a physical object.

The emotional side of my mind, though, saw this: My dog was waiting patiently on the shore for my return. When it finally saw me coming back, it was so happy to see me it jumped right into the boat with me and made us capsize. It was exactly the kind of thing a real-life dog might do.

I had a similar experience with a cat from Happy Pet Shop. I wanted to try out a new parachute, so with the cat in follow mode, I teleported up to a sky box. The cat couldn’t follow me to that height, but as I drifted downward it started to run back and forth, and when I got within range it zoomed up to meet me and floated the rest of the way down by my side.

Of course, I can’t forget sionChickens, the creatures that got me started in the wonderful world of Second Life pets. The problem with chickens is, unlike most pets on the grid, they can be killed. If a chicken gets returned to your inventory for any reason, it dies with no hope of revival.

Naturally I got attached to my chickens right from the start, and in particular my very FIRST chicken, a blue rooster I named Cheiliog (Welsh for “rooster”). He was a gift from a dear friend back in February, and though many other chickens came and went, Cheiliog remained. He was special; he lived in my house with me instead of in a coop, and I sometimes talked to him in chat as if he were another avatar.

Then the unthinkable happened – there was a lag spike on the sim where I lived. Cheiliog zoomed off-world and was returned to my inventory.

I didn’t cry – but it was close. I sat staring at the screen stunned for several minutes, unable to believe he was gone. I was glad I’d gotten him a girlfriend just a few weeks before that – I lost her in the lag spike as well, but at least I had some of their eggs. Now two of Cheiliog’s grandchildren live in a sky box above my house.

So what makes Second Life pets so endearing if they’re not even real? That’s just it – in a sense, they ARE real. Not real dogs or cats or chickens, but real in their own right. They exist, if only in pixel form. By letting them into our second lives, we assimilate them into our real lives just as we do with our avatar friends.