More Awesome Than You!

i got new problem on my sims game wow everything happen to them this christmas i just got new cat called max and i turn my back for one sec  when a fire startd at my christmas tree  :'( and he ran away  :-[ my little sim girl so upset about it. i phone him miss but i forgot to put a collar on him i guess he gone forever. Should i wait he comes home or go get clair a new cat ?

oh and what the deal with santa he didn't like my cookies and gave me a lump of coal  :-X

Use the phone to report your cat missing, someone might bring him back. You should make sure that each pet has a collar as well as a high relationship with at least two household members if possible.

I do not know about Santa.

What happens if they aren't returned? Are they put into the adoption pool, appear as strays or just clog up the hood data files?

guess he might come back he got good relationship with 2 my sims  ;D i hope he comes back  :-[

From what I understand, if they aren't returned and don't come back on their own, they return in time to age up or die. They MAY appear at other lots as a stray, I'm not sure.

I imagine you could try to use a summoner to teleport the pet to the lot.. but I don't know for certain. I've yet to lose a pet. Yet.

Not always true. I've only had one pet run away. He was an elder and the 'hood's bitch. Had very high relationships with the entire family but no collar. I had them call every hour on the hour until the police told them to stop calling. Two generations later, the dog showed up as a stray on another lot and they moved him in just to have him die the next day.

Pets can run away??  I guess this is what I get for never purchasing PETZ. 

If you have Nightlife, can they also get run over?

Santa doesn't like cookies. He likes people who use punctuation properly.

I'm going to take a guess here, but I don't think English is sasmi's native tounge.

A suggestion: You could try playing other families, since the pet may walk by their house, and then befriend it, adopt it, and give it back to the original owner.
 I had a stupid family of wolf breeders once, they had a mother wolf, father wolf and four puppies. As soon as the puppies grew into adulthood they started to chase their father until he ran away. I had given him a collar and immediately reported him missing... and after some days I got a call that the police had found him and if I wanted him back. The same time the policecar arrived everybody got a bad memory and I realized father wolf had just died :O
So the car drove away again, I didn't even get a gravestone. Never tried to breed wolves again :P

I read that if you move the family while a pet has run away then the animal will be removed from the family and placed in the adoption pool.  Maybe you could try that.  It was in the Prima Guide so I don't know how true it is.

When you're trying to breed pets it's best to keep them locked in a fenced in area. When you have a lot of pets hanging around chances are that they will fight and one or more will try to run away. If they're locked into a pen or back yard (with APO denying them access through the house and thus to the street) they will attempt to run away and when it fails the "run away" icon will disappear and your pet will still be right where it's supposed to be (in the pen). IMO, this is the only way to keep your sanity while attempting to run a pet breeding lot.

I've lucked out with breeding. More than once, I've had a pet that hated its parents and fought constantly with them, but still stayed. My only runaway was with a pet that was being constantly attacked by strays.

I think that if a pet shows up on another lot as a stray, the lot residents can call the owners to report a found pet. Not sure of the exact details how this works, but I seem to recall a discussion here about it not long after Pets came out.

If you're trying to do a legacy, though, you can't.  Every Pet heir has to max all its skills AND top its career, which means leaving the lot.  My cats have a special room with snaps in it, which means their needs are always met.  The social/run away thing can still be a problem, though if you can teach your cats to be playful with others you can (eventually!) direct them to play with others.

The dangerous spot for running away seems to be when the cat returns from work.  This often will happen, annoyingly, right when they get promoted.  I watch like a hawk for their coming home time and make sure someone is ready to greet them with "Come here" or "Go Inside."  After that happens, "Run Away" does indeed disappear from the queue and the cat will go sleep, eat, whatever it needs.

Frankly, I think it's a bit obscene to insist that pets, especially cats, have jobs, but them's the rules.

PB

If I have a single mom who wants to have many babies I find it quite useful that the pet(s) can bring home the money since I dislike NPCs such as nannies. The pets can't watch the kids, so the mother has to ;)

Which reminds me, I need to upload that lot sometime...  I used to work at a horse stables, and I recreated it in my game.  Useless as an actual stables, of course, but it works quite nicely as a kennel.  You can separate each individual pet into their own "stall" if need be, plus the arena is a good training area and the pastures make good areas to keep groups like litters and breeding pairs.  And there's fences galore - no pet is going to escape from that thing.  The office area makes a small but useable home as well.  It's too bad my computer isn't fast enough to deal with the 20+ pets it would take to fill that thing.

Yes please, do upload, that sounds interesting.

Okay, I'll do it next time I load the game: I can't post it here, the file's too big.  I could barely cram that thing into a 5x6 lot (it's a HUGE building IRL) so it's not something for wimpy computers.  But I'll do the link-to-sheepland thing.  On the plus side, you'd have to really, really suck to have a runaway pet on that lot.  They'd have to make it through two if not three doors or gates that should be locked to pets at all times except during the carpool if you insist on giving your pets jobs.  It's based off a stable that houses horses worth $100,000 or more so you'd better believe that they're not getting out.  I'm thinking of creating a similar but less elaborate kennel on a smaller lot my ancient computer can actually manage sometime.  Maybe based on that vet place I worked at once.

I remember once a pet walkby (not a runaway) at a lot I was playing. The interaction "check collar" became available, when I had my sim do this the name of the owner was displayed. I assume that a lost pet can be reported in this way.

I saw someone the other day posted that there were horses and chooks, I think they said, from Simslice and somewhere else. I thought I might try putting some horses in your stables.

i'm english silly but i'm dislexic sorry about my spelling  ;D

wow lot great advise I need try these out to night, talk about breeding pets i found a hack i think it was on modthesims that you can pick your pet and beed it with one in the neighbourhood and boom it done  ;D really handy.

It's not about the spelling, it's about the punctuation and capitalization :-\

yeah i know what you mean  but I am  not good at this sort of thing. I am get help with it at university, i just can't help it but i am trying my best. It not my spelling it my punctuation and capitalization . sorry sound dum but what capitalization mean ~_~ maybe i shouldn't post on here again  :-X this get a bit uncomfortable for me now  :'(

Capitalization rules (http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/capital.asp), courtesy of The Blue Book.

Oh i see now  :-\ but capitalization which i read on net mean it can be seen in different way in which country your from, I my self from Britain but can we please drop this about my problem, With my punctuation and capitalization ok so i have a problem i have for many years now and am try to get better but i thought i could talk on here . I guess i can't  :'(

Not if you're going to get touchy about it, no. Personally, I have a hard time buying your explanation that dyslexia is preventing you from using proper punctuation and any capitalization. Last I knew, it didn't prevent one from hitting the shift key. Yes, I know quite a few people with dyslexia.

While there are very few rules of capitalization that vary from country to country, beginning a sentence with a capitalized word is universal.

Yeah Zazazu your right. It not the dyslexia stop me from using punctuation. It just I got to take my time and read it. I got to go over it a few times and write more slowly. ( It doesn't help that I forget how to spell some words) Sorry for be to touchy about it.

This is just a forum after all  ;D it not like I know anyone here for real or I would be scared.

Sorry been such a prat

Well, you also have to keep in mind that MATY is the tough neighborhood of the Sims Forum world.  If you haven't been poked, laughed at, and insulted you haven't been here for very long or you haven't been trying very hard.  But here's a tip:  The best defense is a good offense*.

* Offense is meant in all senses of the word.

yeah i just found out it is tough place to be , guess i got take it with a pinch of salt o_0

You'll take it with a poking stick if you don't start sorting that punctuation out.

I thought you wrote like an eight year old at first, now I know you're at University, you'll have to pull your writing socks up.

Chester Gieke lost his pet when it was attacked by a stray.  It was really annoying because the dog had a good relationship with all four Sims on the lot.  He also had only one more trick to learn and was on the top of his career.  He also had a good personality--it totally sucked.  After waiting for a long time for Star to return, I gave up and deleted him ,then summoned him, then added him to the family.  It made him stay on the lot but he can't get a job.  I just let him be a normal dog, at least he is back.  I wish I knew to try the move out thing and adopt him--that would of been a lot better.

Dyslexia is a broad church and some people do have a problem working out how to divide their thoughts into sentences.  My daughter is one of them.  She's at Uni in the UK now, heading for a good degree, and she still runs everything into one unpunctuated mess.  My experience is that UK teachers either don't know how to do it right themselves, aren't allowed to correct spelling and grammar or have given up trying or caring. I used to get "shut up you neurotic woman" looks when I'd raise her problems with teachers.  It's nice for me that we do care on MATY!

So Sasmi - you're not alone, but do try if you're going to post here or just lurk!  Divide your thoughts into short sentences and run a spell check over it.

Same for my OH. His dyslexia is quite bad and although most of what he writes is decipherable, his speech is affected too (he couldn't even speak properly until he was 5) and he continually confuses words without even realising he's doing it. He keeps telling me long-term relationships never work when he means long-distance. LOL. "Happibly" is another favourite word. I'm quite obsessed with grammar and spelling too so it took a bit of getting used to but now I just think it's quite sweet and part of his individuality. He does suffer horribly from low self-esteem about it though, especially from school which means me as the straight-A with little effort student often gets accused of being "much cleverer" than him. My blonde moments have to make up for that!

Well, I can't speak for other universities but I can tell you that at the UK university where I work, spelling, grammar and punctuation are important and are taken into account in assessment (and, yes, that means marks are knocked off) and are discussed in feedback.  However, I (and my colleagues) am aware that people struggle with these things and I, at least, try to avoid the "you are at this crap" approach which really doesn't seem to help.  I don't know if this is true at other universities but students with problems here are assessed and supplied with help in the form of a support tutor.  I think this tends to cause a conflict of interest in the area of student's language use and skills.  If I know a student has problems and has a support worker, I tend to avoid giving too much input into how a student handles language and advise them to talk to their support tutor about any issues I have with their writing.  I don't want to say anything that will foul up the support tutor's tactics.  So maybe that does come across as backing off from the problem.  My reasoning is that I am not qualified to help people with recognised cognitive problems: I'm an (nearly) academic, not a support worker.  I deal in concepts and ideas and although language is the medium through which we talk to each other about those things, someone having a disability in that area doesn't come under my professional purview.  It's a grey area, for me at least. 

I think attitudes at UK universities are also slightly unexpected to the outsider which adds to the confusion.  Universities here are about research first and foremost (that's what we get the money for and what we are appointed for - when I finally finish my PhD (submission date July this year, oh God), it is my research profile that will get me a job not my teaching skills, despite the fact I am a qualified teacher with over 20 years experience - this is fairly irrelevant) and still hold fast to the notion of universities are research institutions which undergraduates can attend and learn a great deal from being in that environment.  You might make the distinction by saying: (undergrad) students come to university to learn rather than universities offer an education.  It's a distinction most outsiders and, incidentally, most undergraduates don't understand.  The impetus to learn is pushed much more into the realm of the student's initiative rather than directed by the institution.  University in the UK is not an extension of school; it's something else, although, of course, universities do offer an education, in a sense, in the form of classes and assessment.

And finally, we're all aware (or should be at least) that dyslexia doesn't mean you're dumb.  I have plenty of PhD and post-doc friends who are dyslexic.  I get tired of people saying teachers are crap at **** - you can tell, can't you?

Makes sense to me.  You are there to teach a subject at under-graduate level not to provide specialised learning support for grammar and spelling.   It's just harder for a bright student to show how well they grasp the subject when the lack of punctuation gets in the way of reader comprehension.  I've just found it frustrating that this has been true all through my daughter's education.  Subject teachers focus on the subject, english teachers focus on Eng Lit and the mechanistic requirements of GCSE, class teachers care about social interaction and learning support don't get involved for minor problems.  A bright kid with only one problem is 'normal'.   Maybe it was supposed to be my job, but I wasn't trained for it either.