How come, fren? As far as I can see, this is the only game mechanic that there is right now. Pet every 12h and do it as fast as possible to minimize the time drift.
If this was not intended, then the devs could have easily implemented a fixed 12h cycle from e.g. 12am to 12pm, so that it wouldn’t matter when you pet, as long as it was within the 12h timeframe. For example you could decide to pet at 11:59am (and get +1 Kinship) and then pet again at 12:01pm (and get another +1 Kinship). And then you could wait for (up to) 23h:58m without losing a kinship opportunity. Or you could do it at 11:00am and 11:pm. Or whenever else you wanted during these fixed time frames. Then there would be no time drift, and seconds or minutes between pets would be irrelevant.
But that is not how the devs chose to implement the game. They made it so that it is literally impossible to pet twice within 24h, because there will be at least a couple of seconds drift for each pet while the transaction gets confirmed by the network. So the people who actually play the game the way it was designed, by trying to keep the time drift to a minimum, should rank higher. If this is not intended, then why not implement a fixed timeframe like described above, which would be way less of a hassle for everyone?
Imagine a Gotchi with comparably low EXP who has an interaction (which was confirmed at) 02:01:00pm that increases its kinship to e.g. 101. At 02:01:01pm the lowest ranking 101 Gotchi has e.g. rank #50. That would be its correct/fair rank placement (imo). The snapshot time for rewards is scheduled for 11:00:00pm. So all the Gotchis who still have 100 Kinship have 9h to catch up with that 101 Gotchi and most of them will rank higher at snapshot time, because they have more EXP. This could easily pull that Gotchi’s rank down from #50 (which would be the fair rank based on interaction schedule) to e.g. #90, because of all those Gotchis that had time to catch up until the snapshot. This would be extremely unfair.