any good virtual pet website recs?

I wish I knew an answer to this. I think Marapets is still around but not sure. Webkinz is still up and running for sure but it’s a little later than what you’re looking for.

webkinz is great!! i've been on and off but i might try it again ^^

i'm personally still on retail neopets, subeta, and grundo's cafe.
check out this site/list, it might have something more aligned to what you're looking for ^u^

oohh ill check out that list ty :D !!!

oohh ill check out that list ty :D !!!

chickensmoothie is my FAVORITE virtual pet game. i've been playing it since i was in elementary school (but lost my account T_T so i had to start new two years ago n only picked it up again today)

ahhhh i wanna try to get into chickensmoothie possibly!!

I'm a fan of Flight Rising, its not quite like the old games but it has a good community and a lot of features.
There's also dragcave.net which is build around embedding and clicking little pixel dragons.

Webkinz for sure!

Not from a website. But I have no other excuse to talk about princess maker. It's a series of Japanese life SIM games where you take care of a young girl from age 10 to age 18

(Fun fact: it's made ginax the same company who made neon genesis evengelion)

tamanotchi is great you should try it

Maybe Neopets Classic?

https://neopetsclassic.com

And RocketSnail has an upcoming project called Box Critters.

https://boxcritters.com

Hasn't been updated in a while, but Cybos on Neocities is aiming for something similar to what you describe.