Where is the love?

Players should be able to cuddle or play with their pets in order to increase their pets' happiness. Perhaps this can raise community as well at a significantly reduced rate, so that when a player is stranded in a far off place they can play with their pet for half an hour if they don't feel like going back to town.

Additionally, this will give chronic drunks something to do other than stumble around the garden, or strum until their hands fall off.

If you want to intentionally make things difficult, you can require players to equip a pet charm in their off hand slot in order to play with their pet.

You mean like a throwing stick or a catnip ball? Or ... err ... a salmon? I have no idea what bears play with.

exactly like this :D and bears play with garbage cans (ask anyone who's gone camping) But outside of that Salmon is probably a pretty safe bet(maybe use a consumable item to play with them, to make it cost something? kind of like a favor system for pets o_o

Or maybe separate them 2 into 2 actions. 1. play with pet with some item. 2. feed pet a treat (an actual treat)

Did some required research. Apparently bears play with piles of woodchips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ-iSZZeL0c

Apples work too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBJSQIdMW1Y

bears play with bicycles https://goo.gl/FQQpNC

I hear bears are fond of Picnic Baskets and Honey Pots. :)

I agree that pets should effect your community, perhaps Your Independence stats should get a +1 - +5 if you have an animal pet by your side. Maybe the higher the pet's enthusiasm or loyalty the higher the bonus.

For some reason I'm thinking craft something with string and feathers to make some sort of toy for your pets. Rats might like a hand crafted wooden running wheel. Rats also like playing with strips of paper, maybe could switch to strips of leather as seeing as this is already in game and these are giant rats. Also crazy idea, but if you could craft a training dummy, you could get the pet to play with it by telling them to sic'em. Or maybe play could consist of them attacking existing training dummies.

Maybe when you pet dies in combat then you get a negative Independence stat.