Neko, the cat that chased the pointer
The best-known ancestor of every desktop pet is Neko - Japanese for "cat". It was a small pixel cat that ran after the mouse pointer, and when the pointer stopped, it stopped too, scratched, yawned and fell asleep until you moved again.
Neko began on Japanese NEC PC-9801 computers in the 1980s. In 1989 Kenji Gotoh made a version for the Macintosh as a desk accessory, and from there it spread to Windows, to Unix workstations as "oneko", and to almost every platform since. Variants with dogs and other animals followed.
Screen mates
The 1990s brought "screen mates": characters that walked along the edges of windows, fell off them, climbed back up and occasionally multiplied. A white sheep that wandered across Windows desktops became one of the most widely shared, passed around by email and on floppy disks.
They were pure entertainment. Nobody needed a sheep on the taskbar, and that was exactly the appeal.
When the pet tried to help
Then software companies tried to make the pet useful. Microsoft's Office Assistant - remembered as Clippy - arrived with Office 97 to offer help while you typed. It became one of the most famously unwelcome features in software history, was switched off by default a few years later and was removed entirely in Office 2007.
Other assistants of the era fared worse. Some free "desktop buddies" carried adware, which left desktop pets with a reputation they spent years shaking off.
Pets you had to look after
Meanwhile, Tamagotchi - launched by Bandai in 1996 - showed how attached people could become to a creature on a screen, even one living on a keychain with three buttons. Desktop pets borrowed the idea: characters that got hungry, sleepy or bored if ignored.
Shimeji and the mascot revival
In the late 2000s a Japanese program known as Shimeji brought the screen mate back. Its little characters climbed window edges, dragged windows around and multiplied across the screen. Fans made thousands of versions based on anime and game characters, and the format spread far beyond Japan.
Why they keep coming back
The reasons have not changed since Neko:
- They make a work machine feel personal. Most of the screen is spreadsheets and email. A small animal napping on the Dock is a reminder that it is also your computer.
- They react to you. Even a tiny response - a heart when you point at them - creates a sense of company.
- They ask for nothing. Unlike a game or a notification, a good desktop pet does not need attention. It simply carries on.
What a modern desktop pet should do
The lessons of the past four decades are fairly clear. A desktop pet should never block a click, never steal focus, never collect data and never cost noticeable battery. It should stay out of the way when you are working full screen, and it should be easy to hide before a video call. Get those right, and a reindeer walking above the Dock in December is simply pleasant.