Thank you for playing! :D
The petting system was an unfinished feature that I didn't have the time to take out unfortunately. In future jams I will make sure to only include finished features.
The tutorial about how you can only catch wandering monsters was put in the game, but unfortunately it turns out I implemented it wrong and therefore doesn't appear in normal playthroughs. After all the issues I saw when people playing it's definitely something I'd like to make even more clear in the future.
I did make sure to have all monster required paths be completely optional, however you bring up a good point about how players may feel the need to get everything regardless. It's not something that I thought about at the time, but it's a really important point and I'll be thinking a lot on this when I get to updating the game.
Your feedback is really appreciated, sorry for taking a while to reply!