Prepare to Cater to Their Every Beep

OK, moms / dads / primary caregivers get ready. School’s about to start and you may be faced with a brand-new day-care situation.

I’m talking about the electronic pets that beeped into our lives over the summer, the little colored oval gizmos on chains that have more megabytes of RAM than my first computer. You probably stood in line to buy one at Target or, as I did, overpaid big time for a pair of them on the gray market.

Now teachers are readying their classrooms for the September onslaught of bright shiny faces, and you can be sure they’re not going to permit the kids to be packing Nano Kitties, even with the beepers turned off.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, these Nanos, Gigas, Tamagotchis and other cyber creatures tend to die if they aren’t monitored. They have to eat. They have to be played with and regularly disciplined. They take naps. They poop, and if you don’t clean up after them quickly, they get sick. If they get sick, you’re looking at some form of medical intervention.

If you don’t play with them, or if you discipline them too harshly, they’ll fling their little hobo sticks over their shoulders and stomp right off their liquid crystal screens. Down come the digital curtains, and here come the tears and recriminations.

I’m sure you can see where we’re going here. If they can’t be taken to school, someone is going to have to keep an eye on them during the day so they’re alive and healthy when their owner retrieves them after school.

Now, you surely don’t want to face, “You killed my Giga, Mommy!”

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There are some options here. You can expose the pet to a strong magnet and then look suitably baffled when your child complains that his Alien Duck doesn’t work anymore. You can hope the fad blows over by the third week of September. Or you can take adult responsibility to nourish and sustain what is really a very appealing . . . microchip.

I may as well admit right that I have some recent experience in this arena. I have my own Nano, the first cat I’ve ever owned that didn’t make me wheeze.

I have one because my mother, normally a reliable woman, purchased a single Nano Kitty and mailed it to us, forgetting temporarily that I have two children. Before my daughters resorted to physical violence, I stepped in and grabbed the device, which at that moment was emitting little sounds of birth and new life.

A newborn kitten, no bigger than a few pixels, ambled across the screen and indicated its keen and immediate need for a bottle. It was a moment to treasure. I have now cared for that animal for 31 Nano years (31 days), a neighborhood record. The buzz among the kids was that it would automatically croak when it hit 30. None of those belonging to the kids had made it past 23. But I think this has more to do with school-age attention spans than computer programming, so I’m trying for the double-digit limit of 99. (But who knows. It too may lose important amounts of memory when it hits 44.)

With so many of these things showing up around the house, I have become expert enough in different platforms to counsel other caregivers who find themselves stuck with a Nano Baby while the kids are in the pool.

Here are some tips for the cyber sitter:

* Don’t delay latrine duty, and follow each toileting session with a bath. Attention to hygiene pays off in the pet’s overall health, and you won’t have to explain to your spouse why you are up at midnight administering a shot to a beeping key chain.

* Develop methods of playing with the pet while you are driving. Avoid tasks that require you to look at the display. The easiest games are the ones based on simple mathematics like flipping a coin. It doesn’t matter which button you push--you’ll win half the time, and the pet cares only that you played with it.

* To avoid embarrassment at work, hide the pet in a pocket or under a few papers; a messy desk is a real asset here. But be sure it’s close enough for an audible distress call. You can always pretend that it’s your pager going off.

* Turn off the sound and take it into the restroom with you. You can usually accomplish a full round of feeding, play and discipline in about five minutes.

Your pet (and your child) will love you for it.

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Care and Feeding

Some symbols to know when a Giga or Nano Pet is in your care:

Latrine duty. Your pet has made a little mess; clean it up promptly.

Naughty pet! Stern measures are required: to spank or not to spank?

Sick animal. A shot or some medicine every two hours.

Feeding time. Choice of cat food or some yummy fish bones.