Overview :
The concept of having a smaller companion might be foreign to many of these heptapods. In short, human pets are of a different species and they are good companions to have for a certain time period. Not only that some pets such as the species of dog more specifically canis lupus familiaris.
Physical Description of Different Species of Pets
As seen inthe picture below the human looks much larger than the pet, in some cases the pets can be larger than humans but for this plaque we will only be focusing on one species of pet. Which is the dog. The dog is the most popular species of pet on the planet Earth. To a heptapod the notion that there could be another species might be unknown to them. In the book these creatures could be the only ones living on their planet. To make it easier to understand what a pet is, we could simply describe it like this. A pet is like a baby, a heptapod offspring. The difference is that the offspring does not grow up to become a heptapod it instead just grows larger and larger with lackluster mental capabilities and the inability to develop a communication skill. They however can obey simple commands such as sitting down or standing up and they also know how to catch and return objects that the owner throws.
Use of Pets in Society
This species has a lot of benefits towards humans one of the most important benefits they have is that they make humans happier. The concept of emotion might be foreign to these heptapods so allow me to explain. When a human feels the emotion of sadness they might do some bad things just to not work or even end their lives. Sometimes pets make it so that humans are not sad and instead have the emotion of happiness. The emotion of happiness is a good thing as it makes it so that humans are willing to do tasks and work.
Responsibility
Having a pet can be a huge responsibility, a pet does not have the emotional or physical capabilities to perform everyday tasks. The only thing a pet can do is eat and sleep; this means that humans would have to manually shower them. Showering in this case means washing them as if dogs are not properly washed then they can carry dangerous viruses. If the aliens do not understand the concept of showering then we could only show them that humans and dogs naturally become dirty and in order to become clean again we have to wash ourselves.