Sparky and Boots

I've been reading up on the IF Art Show recently, and was particularly interested in playing some of the games (pieces?) from the "portrait" category (besides Galatea, which was one of the first parsers I played). This one... didn't work for me. It does little to capture the personalities of the individual animals (the eponymous Sparky and Boots, a dog and a cat respectively), instead creating a rote mechanical exercise of "feed, pet, throw ball, repeat" (only, more frustrating than that because these actions must be done a certain number of times and in a certain order to make progress). Having a score system seemed antithetical to the spirit of the Art Show, driving me toward completing a goal instead of meaningfully interacting with the subjects--and there wasn't really any meaningful interaction to be had. So unfortunately, for me this fails as both a portrait and a game.