Virtual Pets Starving to Death?

Update: The Webkinz site is back up... my raccoon was a bit low on food but otherwise he seemed ok. Total outage was roughly three weeks. I'm attaching an updated photo (isn't he just the cutest rodent?) and a bit of machinima documentary footage as I (and my new pet) explore the virtual world for the first time. The UI can only be described as "screen barf".

Update: The Webkinz interactive virtual-pet site remains down, making this Day Nine (since I've started counting)... Virtual frogs, dogs, cats, rats, bats, racs... they're all left in the virtual cold of ones and zeros, where even their owners (children of all ages) cannot reach them not even to deliver a scratch behind the ears. Kids around the world are learning that sometimes Stuffed Animal 1.0 is the way to go.

The Ganz Webkinz site has been down for several days now; one can log in, but the pet area is stuck in a constant "loading" process. Meanwhile, at least one kid is in tenterhooks, waiting to feed his virtual pug. Previously, Ganz had an "Under Construction" screen in place to mollify virtual-pet owners around the globe, but now not even such a screen exists. Ganz' parent website (as it were) makes no mention of this outage.

I've tried to help my girlfriend's son access this site via four different browsers (Firefox, Safari, Flock, IE7). The real-world incarnations of these pets look like normal stuffed animals, but they have an online manifestation as well, ostensibly to help kids ease into the responsibility of caring for some sort of dependent. I understand the these virtual pets have levels (like in video games) of happiness, health and food, which must be maintained by the pet owner. So, this may end up being a lesson in what happens when you depend on proprietary technology: in real life, if your local pet store is closed, you'd just visit another; if Princess' favorite brand of cat food is sold out, you can try different kind. In this case, though, the pets themselves are sequestered, the iron bars of server_down keeping hungry pet from frantic owner.

When service resumes, will these levels be as they were left, as though no time has passed... or will happiness have decreased as ever-more-ravenous pets turn on one another?

Will it look like Escape from New York, but with virtual dogs, cats, monkeys, and birds? Will the resultant scene even be safe for kids to look at?!

Sysadmins, please run a chronjob to turn back the virtual-pet clock, and prevent an all-out animal meltdown! Please, please think of the pets!

[jordan is not affiliated with Ganz, though his virtual raccoon may well have gone feral by now; racs see poodles as snacks at the best of times, never mind as social order begins to decay]