When Mists of Pandaria was first announced, the Pet Battles feature didn’t particularly excite me. I barely remembered to summon the companion pets I already had, and I didn’t long for the pets I didn’t have enough to expend much energy in trying to acquire them. Later, as I watched my friends succumbing to Pet Battle Fever and (like Effy) observed that Pet Battles + OCD Tendencies = Bad Combination, I determined to not tumble down that rabbit hole.
Then my Furtive Father Winter 2012 donor, the lovely Kialesse, sent me an in-game mail to let me know that Real Life had crit her rather sorrowfully over the holidays. Attached to the message was a Pandaren Air Spirit.
I was awed by this generous gift. What Kia didn’t realize, though, was that she’d really given me two pets — the Pandaren Air Spirit became my 125th pet, granting me in addition the Brilliant Kaliri!
After receiving Kia’s magnificent gift, I felt like it would be a churlish response indeed to let such a treasure of a pet lie sleeping in my Pet Journal.
And so, off to the Battle Pet Trainer I went. I chose the Brilliant Kaliri as my first Battle Pet, naming it Kiamore in honor of Kialesse. As I unlocked the other two slots on my team, I brought in the Pandaren Air Spirit and my Pandaren Monk — another generous Winter Veil gift from a dear blogging friend.
I’ll spare you the blitz of newbie Pet Battle achievements, except for a couple –
– that, with alts already stationed in most of the capital cities, were a cinch to accomplish.
In the long run, I’d like to complete the Tamer achievements, so I also made sure to visit the two faction-specific tamers.
I’m not, however, going to go after the Safari achievements. I’m already feeling like my Altoholic credentials are slipping because I haven’t yet got a second character — let alone a third or a fourth or more! — to 90.
Many thanks again to Kia for a sweet FFW gift!
What a wonderful gift albeit under such sad conditions. Glad to see you’re taking up the ‘battling’ mentality even if it’s slowly. I should have gone against my better judgement and sent you a pet gift for Winter Veil anyway.
Pet battles are kind of fun
I’m very glad that it’s an account-wide feature, though it is a bit of a pain to have to turn off pet tracking on characters that I don’t want to be distracted by it 
Yes, I saw Kia was having a hard time over Christmas
her blog has been so quiet of late. I missed talking to her brain. But I’m glad you didn’t get forgotten!
Aye — I would have been content just with her in-game note to let me know that RL had gone pear-shaped. I hope things are starting to sort themselves out for her.
[...] The tale of how Kamalia finally answered the siren’s call of Pet Battles [...]