Pets With... Cooldowns?

so mmo-champ is reporting that in the most recent beta patch the guild page and the guild herald companion pets will have pretty long cooldowns. 4 hours for the herald and 8 hours for the page. according to their tooltips, these two companions only last 5 minutes once summoned, so it makes me wonder with such long cooldowns and short durations... how on earth do we classify them? are they TRUE companion pets, or are they to be considered more in line with an item like jeeves? (should be noted that jeeves is listed under "combat pets" on wowhead.)

this is somewhat of a puzzle for me. obviously jeeves is NOT a non-combat pet. it definitely does not meet the requirements to be even considered a companion. let's refresh our memory on what it takes to be a vanity pet (as defined by warcraftpets.com):

to be considered a TRUE vanity pet..

1. The entity is summoned via a summoning spell found in the character's Pets tab.
2. The entity counts toward various Vanity Pet Achievements.
3. The entity must have the tag of "companion".

check off no to all three for jeeves.

but these two new guild companions.. hmm. so far it seems as if they will meet all three guidelines (although it's yet to be confirmed, especially #2 and #3), with the exception that they will have summoning durations/cooldowns. this will be a first for companion pets. i can't think of any other pet that follows suite.

the argent squire and argent gruntling are the only two pets that come close, both having cooldowns for their argent pony bridle attachment. BUT! even with a cooldown on an optional feature for the squire/gruntling, you can still summon both companions to run along side you at any time without any time duration to worry about. i can't say if the same will be true for the page and herald or not. hopefully there are guilds on the beta close to completing the achievements that will unlock the page/herald, and we'll get more information on this.

that being said, IF both the new guild companions cannot be summoned outside of their cooldowns like the squire and gruntling can be, will they be considered true vanity pets? or will they be classified as jeeves type items/spells despite adhering to the above non-combat pet qualities? answering this may be a tough one and may spark the need to rethink just what a companion pet is.

i haven't found any other information on the guild page or herald yet; both the guild achievements necessary to unlock them will take even beta guilds some time to finish. so for now i can only speculate that these two companions will be interactive and have some (very) desirable quality due to their short durations and extremely long cooldowns.

i'm eagerly awaiting more news on these two "companions"... if i can even i call them that. O_o