Ok. I'll get this out of the way - I'm building a monster game, similar to pokemon and digimon and all the other hated games, but it'll be fun. Now, please don't raz me for that, ok?

Alright, the problem I'm having (and can't find anything written on) is having a character have a team of monsters and more in a farm-type place. it'll work like this.

Whenever a player catches a monster, the program checks to see if his party is full. if it is, it knows to send the monster to the farm. after that, it'll ask the player to name it, and creates a new monster (with the same stats as the one that was fought) and gives it that name. after that, it'll either add the monster to his party or send it to the farm, depending on what it found by checking earlier.

The problem is, i don't know how to have the monsters -- should they be objects or what? The monsters need to be able to be called into battle (a turn-based system) but aren't visible on the map, the player has a new stat panel to display the status of each of his monsters. I don't know how to make the monsters exist and be able to be called out when they need to be.

Ok, i realize i might not have explained the problem throughly, and i have zip in code so far, but i'm gonna go for this, so any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance-
Magnus417