Bitty Kitty Giga Pet log (no comments until complete, please)

[KrisKris]

Hey, all! It's been a little while since I've been around and posting. I did a Komputer Koala log and a StarCat log a while ago.
This time, I'm opting to keep the thread as a straight log with no comments while it's in progress, and then if anyone feels like commenting once the life cycle is complete, that would be fine!

This is my first time running a Bitty Kitty Giga Pet! For anyone who doesn't know, it is one of the classic '90s pets, and it's one of the Giga Pets that was offered at KFC restaurants. Back in the '90s, I had a Micropup Giga Pet from KFC, which was my first virtual pet ever. This kitty is cute, but I'm surprised at some of the differences (and things I miss about Micropup) since they're both KFC Giga Pets.
Let's get started!

Note I'll be posting photos as clickable thumbnails, so click on any photos of interest for a bigger view!

---DAY 1---
Day 1 is always my longest log entry, as there's lots to introduce!
To start, here's a look at the packaging and instructions.



Check out the classic Giga Pets brochure it included:




I went with the name Betty for this Bitty Kitty! Here is a quick video clip of her "birth," where she just jumps out of a basket. Unlike the Micropup, she does not have a birthday tune that plays during her birth scene.

View attachment bkvid1.mp4


She started off at a scant 2 pounds. It didn't take her long at all to grow to 7 pounds and to change appearance! In the photos below, you can see she looks less skinny in the second photo of her sitting there.




Here's Betty's first poop and photos of the food she eats (plate of cat food for a meal and a fish for a treat).




Here's video clip of her playing her game where she catches a butterfly. You can see her sad reaction and her happy reaction here since I failed a couple of times and succeeded a couple of times. It's an easy game, but a little awkward with one hand. Something I like better about the KFC Micropup is it has a little tune that plays during the game and during eating, and then there's also a sound effect that goes with the happy and sad reactions for the Micropup. The Micropup also has reactions to more things -- for example, it shows a happy reaction after eating and cleaning up poop. I think the Bitty Kitty only has a reaction after her game.

View attachment bkvid2.mp4


That's enough for one day! See you tomorrow for day 2.

 

[KrisKris]

---DAY 2---

Betty is doing well! She's now weighing in at 12 pounds.



Here are her current stats. (Health 96, happiness 100, hunger 92, discipline 98, and overall score 96 out of 100.)



Yesterday and for the first part of today, her health was staying down in the 80s. Now, it's climbed to 96. Hopefully I can get it all the way up to 100. I know that once vintage Giga Pets reach age 14, it's crucial for their health to stay above 95.
I'm taking good care of her and keeping her scores up, but the health stat on old Gigas takes a while to go up, usually.

I'm surprised that her programming is a lot more like my Komputer Koala than like my Micropup, considering Micropup is also a KFC Giga and the koala is not.
For example, Micropup lacks the training feature, which is something I think most Giga Pets have (and which Bitty Kitty and Komputer Koala have). It is a separate feature from playing games with the pet and involves selecting a trick from the trick menu and rewarding your pet with a treat when it does the right trick. This feature can be used to keep the discipline score up instead of using the discipline/scold feature.

Like the koala and unlike the Micropup, she does not use her attention icon to ask for treats throughout the day. It's not necessary to give her treats outside of training.
Like the koala and unlike Micropup, she uses her attention icon to ask for naps during the day. Like the koala and unlike Micropup, she doesn't seem to go to sleep on her own and needs the light to be turned off before she'll sleep. She and the koala turn the lights on themselves when they wake up.

Like the koala and unlike Micropup, her stats do not drop overnight while she sleeps, and thus she doesn't urgently need attention when she wakes in the morning, so that's nice.
She makes her meow sound effect (which isn't actually a meow, just a particular type of beep) often when she's left alone and wandering around on-screen. I prefer virtual pets not to make noise on their own unless they need attention, so that's a little annoying, but it seems to be common with a lot of Giga Pets (not Micropup, though). Her attention beep is a lot more like the koala's, although I think it's not exactly the same. She generally has a lot fewer sound effects than Micropup, which I've already mentioned. I do miss the cute little tunes Micropup has during activities.
Like the koala, her happiness score seems to pretty much stay at 100 most of the time, but she will occasionally ask (with her attention icon) for a game of butterfly-chasing anyway if I go long enough without playing it with her. Her scores of hunger and discipline drop regularly, and I've been tending to her often to keep those up. I'm glad her happiness score stays up so easily because her game only raises her happiness by a point or two, like the koala.

Since she's so similar to the koala, I figured it would be wise to use the same strategy I used for my koala when she lived to 50. That means I'll give one bath daily, only one treat daily (so teach one trick daily and give her the treat the first time she does the trick correctly; the treat isn't needed every time she does the trick after that for the rest of the day), and wait for her hunger score to drop by increments of 20 before I feed her meals which will raise her hunger by 20.

A difference I noticed between Bitty Kitty and the koala is Bitty Kitty does not have the Giga Pets origin story in the instructions, which I posted in the Komputer Koala log, about the evil wizard trapping the animals in jeweled pods.

I think she seems to only gain weight when I feed her treats. Yesterday, I fed her treats at least a few times and was doing a few different tricks with her. Today, I've just been doing one trick with her and gave her one treat the first time she did it. So she only gained weight once today.

The trick I had her do today is "walk." Real fancy trick, lol. (See video below.)

View attachment bkvid1.mp4

 

[KrisKris]

---DAY 3---
Betty had a good day today! I slept in, and she didn't get any attention for close to a couple of hours after she woke up except for me cleaning up poop when I temporarily woke up. Her scores didn't suffer much at all. Her discipline stat had gotten a little low, down in the 40s, but otherwise she was doing quite well. Thankfully, I'd put her to bed with high stats last night.

She's now 15 pounds. I accidentally gave her an extra treat today from her food menu when I didn't intend to, so she got a total of two treats today, which may have raised her weight slightly extra.

Her health stat has climbed and has been sitting at a perfect score of 100 just about all day today! Her current overall score (for all stats) is 98.



Here's a video clip of her performing her "jump" trick.

View attachment bkvid1.mp4

 

[KrisKris]

---DAYS 4 & 5---

Didn't get around to posting yesterday, so here's an update on the last couple of days!




She looked like she changed in appearance again yesterday/grew slightly! But I guess I'm not sure. You can only tell when she's sitting on the screen and looking straight, not when she's moving around.




Yesterday, she surprised me by falling asleep a couple of times without asking me to turn the light off for her! I thought she only went to sleep after I turned the light off.




She's been staying happy and healthy! I've been keeping all of her stats in the upper 90s the vast majority of the time, except for letting her hunger score get low enough to feed her a meal (worth 20 hunger points) without her hunger score going over 100. She's been progressing well with my methods so far. No trips to the vet needed or anything!
I like playing her butterfly-chasing game. It doesn't take a lot of time to play and is fun/cute -- and she doesn't need it super frequently either. Her happiness score has still been staying up! If I go a little too long without playing her game, her happiness drops by just a couple of points and she lets me know with her attention icon and sad face that she needs a game.

The training trick I did with her throughout the day yesterday was "stalking":

View attachment bkvid1.mp4


The trick we did today is "meow." Lol
View attachment bkvid2.mp4



This is her bath feature. She bathes herself, of course, being a cat!
View attachment bkvid3.mp4

 

[KrisKris]

---GIGA PETS INFO DEEP DIVE, PLUS MY NEXT PLAN!---

(Well, semi-deep dive)
Yesterday, I did a little research/reading on differences between Giga Pets, particularly KFC Giga Pets, due to the surprise I mentioned earlier at my KFC Bitty Kitty's differences from my KFC Micropup. To my surprise, I learned that there are different versions of each one! Some Giga Pets have programming like Playmate's Nano pets, while others have the programming style unique to Giga Pets. There are two different versions of each the KFC Gigas (two of Bitty Kitty, two of Micropup, two of Cyber Kitty, two of Digipooch). I'm not sure whether there are also Nano versions of any of the non-KFC Giga Pets. I didn't seem to spot any obvious Nano versions of those on eBay.

The Nano style of programming, which my Micropup has, includes more sound effects and reaction screens and does not have the training feature where you teach the pet tricks for rewards. I think the pets may also look a little different on screen, but I'm not sure about this yet. I thought some photos I looked at of the other version of Micropup looked a little different than mine.

The info I read helped me make the connection that the sound effects and reaction screens of my Micropup (with Nano programming) are just like my Nano Baby! So that makes sense.

The easiest way to tell the difference when browsing (for example, on eBay) is to get a close look, if you can, at the icons on the bottom of the screen. The Giga Pets with the Nano programming do not have the bell icon in the bottom row for training and will only have four icons total in the bottom row instead of five.

Also, pets with the Nano programming have pixelated elements to their background environment as they walk around on screen and they generally have more movement when left alone than the other Gigas. The other Gigas have a more plain background (no pixelated elements) and sit in the center of the screen in between moving around a little bit to do their tricks when they're bored.

One other difference I'm aware of -- and I didn't read about this difference; I've observed it in my Micropup with Nano programming -- is that the Nano ones have their stats/scores drained overnight. So you will wake up to some of the scores being at zero and need to play with/feed the pet right away, plus clean up its poop because if memory serves me correctly about my Micropup, they also poop as soon as they wake. So, in that way, I'd say the main Giga programming is easier than the Nano programming.

But not only are there the two versions I've mentioned -- there's a still additional version of some Gigas that was the earliest/original version. (If I remember what I read correctly, this would have been when Gigas were new in 1997, but this changed by later in '97, I think.) The icons at the top and bottom of the screen weren't visible all the time, and you could only see an icon when highlighted, like Tamagotchis. Some of the icons were also different. I'm not clear on whether there were any actual content differences/gameplay differences in these very early Giga Pets! Perhaps I'll get one someday.

Upon discovering these differences and browsing eBay with the intention just of trying to spot different ones for fun, I ended up purchasing the pair of kitties pictured below! (Another Bitty Kitty, but with the Nano programming, and a CyberKitty, also with Nano programming.) Seemed like a decent deal for two working classic Gigas with the shell markings appearing to still be perfect or near perfect.



My plan after completing this current Bitty Kitty log will be to run those two kitties so that I (and anyone following) can see the differences between the Nano and Giga programming (they're both Nano programming, but the Bitty Kitty in this current log is regular Giga programming). We'll also see if there are differences between Bitty Kitty and CyberKitty, which were both KFC kitty Giga Pets! I assume they must be slightly different in some way? I know the pictured CyberKitty doesn't have the KFC logo, but CyberKitty was exclusive to KFC according to my reading. Some KFC Gigas didn't have the KFC logo on them, and I'm not sure why. I've also seen Micropups with and without the KFC logo.

If anyone is interested in seeing a couple of the sites where I read some of the above info about Gigas, here are a couple of links. (I went through multiple other sites and forum exchanges, too!) Sometimes sites don't get everything correct, though, like when they state "KFC Gigas all had ____ programming" or some other statements I've seen along similar lines about other Gigas. I think, sometimes, even folks who are aware of differences existing aren't fully aware of all the details.
https://tamapetchi.wordpress.com/2018/07/08/kfc-giga-pets-with-multiple-programs/https://tamapetchi.wordpress.com/2018/07/07/the-many-programs-within-giga-pets/

 

[KrisKris]

---DAY 6---

She grew taller today! Previously, she'd only grown wider, I think. Now she takes up the whole screen height-wise, and I'd say she looks a bit slimmer again due to the increased height. But she's up to 29 pounds! She's much too heavy for a cat, but I guess that's normal for a Giga Pet! I know my koala maxed out at 99 or 100 pounds.




And I don't think I mentioned that it's confirmed she definitely doesn't only gain weight when she gets treats, which is what I briefly thought earlier on.

 

[KrisKris]

---DAY 8---

Betty is a fat, happy cat! Yesterday she grew wider again to go with her new tall height. She's weighing in at 38 pounds. I took a photo a few minutes ago to post, and she was 37 pounds. Then I just fed her a meal and saw that she went up to 38, so I retook the photo! The pounds just keep coming.



Since she looks so big and tall on the screen now and she keeps getting heavier, I'm picturing a cat almost like Clifford the Dog.

 

[Not Elliette]

that bitty kitty is so cuuuute!

edit: oops didnt realize no comments until just now sorry!

 

[KrisKris]

sorry!

It's okay.

---DAY 12---

There hasn't really been anything new to report. Things have been going well. She's 11 years old now and has surpassed 50 pounds!



The pair of kitties I mentioned ordering above hasn't arrived yet. Their estimated delivery date was 5 days ago. The tracking updates are just saying "in transit to next facility, arriving late." Real helpful, USPS! I'll be tempted to start running/logging them as soon as they arrive, but I think taking care of 3 of these at once would be a bit much, so I'll likely stick to starting those after Betty's life cycle has run her course.

 

[KrisKris]

---DAY 15---
She hit age 14 today, which is significant because vintage Giga Pet instructions say 14 is old age for a Giga Pet. They're designed to live around that long but can live longer with great care. (As mentioned, my koala lived to age 50.)
Keeping her stats up will be increasingly important now, and perhaps increasingly difficult. It hasn't been too hard so far. I generally try to check on her every half hour (or more often), but I've left her alone for 1-2 hours sometimes. Probably need to be more careful now!

Also, she is now a 64-pounder! No more visible growth or evolution has taken place.


She's still never been sick/needed a doctor visit.

 

[KrisKris]

---DAY 16---




She's still hanging in there, but I think tomorrow morning, I'm likely to wake up to an angel kitty. I accidentally slept later than I intended to today, without waking to tend to her. She was only awake and without care for about an hour and a half, which normally hasn't been a big deal, but now that she's over the 14-year mark, her health stat seems to drop more quickly if she's not tended to for a while.

Her health stat was down to 94 when I woke up, and while I was tending her, it dropped down to 93. I did get it back up and have been maintaining her scores for the rest of the day, but I think a dip below 95 at this age (for the health stat specifically) ends up being fatal. That's what happened to my koala, although she was quite older when this happened. The koala's health dipped below 95 while I was in a movie, and she did fine while I cared for her the rest of the day but then died during her sleep that night.

So I suspect this may be my last day with Betty. But today, the other couple of Giga Pet kitties I ordered arrived, and I plan to get started with them soon after Betty leaves me.

 

[KrisKris]

---Day 17---

To my surprise, she's still going strong even after the brief dip in health I mentioned yesterday.
Folks, the legend that a dip in the health stat below 95 for vintage Giga Pets over the age of 14 will always result in death HAS BEEN DISPROVED!

Betty is doing great and still putting on more pounds!

 

[KrisKris]

---DAY 21---

She's now age 20 and a whopping 85 pounds!



I know I've said this once already, but I do think this will be her last day with me now. I accidentally left her in my car when I got home from an outing today and totally forgot about her for a few hours, not hearing her beeps. When I finally retrieved her, her hunger and discipline scores were at zero, and her health and happiness scores (which usually stay up at or very near 100) were down in the 70s. She was also sitting with a couple piles of poop. It hasn't been unusual for me to let her hunger and discipline scores dip down into the 40s at times, but never to zero before.

I got most of her scores back up (the happiness score was a bit of a pain because each game only raises the happiness meter by 2 points), but her health stat is still only at 80 currently. The health takes a while to go back up.



So I'm guessing I'll have an angel cat in the morning when she wakes up, due to her age and the dip in health!

 

[KrisKris]

---DAY 22---

Yep, she was an angel this morning. R.I.P.

View attachment bkvid1.mp4

She could have lived quite a bit longer (like my koala Giga Pet) If I hadn't neglected her yesterday afternoon. But age 21 is still a pretty long/full life for a vintage Giga Pet, so I'd say Betty had a good run.

Now that this log is complete, if anyone wants to comment on anything, feel free to! I should be starting my next log (two Giga kitties with Nano programming) in a few days, on Sunday or Monday of next week. So, if you're interested in following that one, make sure to drop in the forum and check for it!