Why do pets reject items?

[Mistress Dizzy]

So... .both my pets refuse to eat Watery Hot Dog and they also both don't want to read Doughnutfruit Collectors Guide.

 

Can someone please tell me what's going on? There are a few more items that they'll refuse, but those are the two I remember specifically.

 

Is there some kind of error? How can I fix this?

[rowtiderow]

I know that pets find books that have a name that is the exact same length as the pet's name, or multiples of it.... E.G. if your pet was named Mark, it would have 4 letters in its name. It would not want to read books whose title has 4, 8, 12, etc. letters. You can change that by switching the site language at the bottom of the page. Usually Spanish works for me. I assume it's a similar reason, so maybe try changing the language?

[Ali Cat]

Change the language to one that's updated on the site (so not a language like Japanese that Neopets abandoned - new items just have English words) and then try and give your pet the food or book item :) If it doesn't work in that language, just keep trying different ones until it reads or eats the item (for the book, look for the colorful text to tell you it vanished; for the food item, see if your Neopet is smiling or angry when you try and feed it the item.) Eventually it'll eat/read it!

[Ranaki]

Oh, I'll have to try that with my Cybunny. She's been very finniky as of late with a lot things, never understood why...

[Lady Lyuba]

What I do is count the letters in an item's name before giving it to my pet. Most items go by a coding of "the same amount of letters in your pet's name or twice the amount" to prevent your pet from using an item. Spaces count! With books, however, it's different. As far as I can remember, it's name*2+1, or name+1*2+1 = no read. Something like that.

 

I have learned with Chinese it is different - your pet will not use an item that has half or 1/3 the amount of letters your pet's name has. So I'd advise against using Korean and both forms of Chinese.

[Mistress Dizzy]

Huh. That is really weird... I wonder why that's even a thing. That makes no sense...

[Koralis]

I remember it was the most amazing thing when I learned changing the language would fix that because I had just spent a lot of NP on some petpet and then the pet I wanted to give it to wouldn't accept it! I was so upset until I changed it to Chinese!

[lovedwallflower]

Huh. That is really weird... I wonder why that's even a thing. That makes no sense...

 

It's to replicate human taste - sometimes people don't like certain foods / books. They also try to do this with the messages the pet gives you like 'why don't you paint me grey if you're going to leave me like this?'