Hello, everyone. I am an animal-uplift supporter; animal uplift being an obscure branch of transhumanism, wherein a sophont/tool-use-capable form of an animal is made, by means of genetic engineering. In short, "what if we made Zootopia real, lol".
My question, is that if the Affini just want sapient pets, then why not genetically uplift them from any creature they find desirable? The Affini must have the technology to create new life forms from genetic material both natural and artificial. If they wanted, they could have humanity, as well as sophont forms of the 5000 other land-mammals on Earth, plus whatever other creatures they liked, and they could do this for just about every planet bearing any multicellular life. Going forward from this, they could create entire evolutionary trees of custom life forms just for pets, basically like a living art form.
I'm creating a world building project, where humanity does basically this, minus the pet part; just creating endless new sapient & productive races from animal life found on various planets, and also more *inspired* sapient creations