I need strays. Looking for scruffy looking animals!

[Gwill]

I'm not much good at creating pets, so I'm looking for some mangy and scruffy looking pets to use as strays in my hood.
I currently have two dogs and a cat roaming the neighbourhood in addition to a whole lot of wolves, so what I mostly need are cats: Dirty, smelly, ugly, shabby and scruffy cats (with rabies!).
Does anyone know where I could find such pets?  Or is anyone up to the task of making some?

[notveryawesome]

I haven't seen any pets like that, but I could try to make some. I've been wanting scruffier strays in my game, as well.

[Sagana]

I saw some starving cats meant to be strays at MTS2. Problem (for me) is if you take them in and feed them right, they'll still look like that, so I wouldn't really consider them part of the adoption pool. They'd need to stay strays. I think.

[Gwill]

Any strays I add to the hood will stay strays.  My sims are not much into adopting pets anyway.

[notveryawesome]

I'll just plan on making some scruffy cats the next time I fire up my game. How many do you need? 5? 10? A baker's dozen? I assume they should look half-starved with patchy-looking fur and perhaps mean expressions on their faces (insofar as pixelated cats can look mean). Oooooh, this will be fun!

[Gwill]

They don't all need to look starved, there must be at least one who looks like he's the one eating all the mice.
Oh, how I wish it was possible to make cats with missing ears or one eye.

I think I need at least another 5 stray cats for this neigbourhood, but feel free to cook up a whole lot of templates.

[notveryawesome]

I'll just make a variety of shapes, including at least one 'bruiser' cat who bullies the others. Using two different eye-and-ear colours can give the illusion of missing or damaged eyes/ears. That's the best I can do, unfortunately, but I'll make at least some of them look über ratty, whilst others look a bit healthier (but not too healthy -- they are strays, afterall).

[Gwill]

Did anyone ever find a way to make custom pet eye colours, or are replacements the only option?
I might look into making milky and bloodshot eyes/replacement, at least for myself.

[notveryawesome]

I don't think anybody's figured out a way to do custom pet eyes, but I too have been wanting some different options. I've found default replacements that I like, but they're still basically the same colours as the originals, just less cartoony. Truly custom pet eyes would be awesome. I do hope somebody figures out how to do them.

[notveryawesome]

Well, here are some scruffy cats for your neighbourhood (how exactly does one go about making them into strays, anyway?). I did six cats total. I'd planned on doing more, but lost my inspiration after the sixth one. If you can think of any specific designs you want, or ways to tweak the existing ones, let me know and I'll attempt to do them. I purposely made these look sort of drab and dirty, but you can always tweak the settings if you want brighter coat-colours. I gave them what I thought were appropriate names, but obviously you can name them whatever you want in your own game. Also, I use default replacements for the eyes, so unless you have the same ones, your cats' eyes will look notably different than the ones pictured here. The ones I use are by Awasegg at MTS2 (her/his older set, not the new ones).

And now for photos!

Bruiser body:



Bruiser face:



Mange body:



Mange face:



Old Feeble body (I designed this cat to be set up as an elder in CAP):



Old Feeble face:



Pansy body:



Pansy face:



Patch body:



Patch face:



Scruff body:



Scruff face:



What they will look like in the CAP breed-chooser menu:



The files (packaged together in one .rar file -- just delete the ones you don't want):

feral cats for download

[Gwill]

I love them!  Especially Old Feeble, poor thing.

(how exactly does one go about making them into strays, anyway?).

I have been hoping someone would make a teleport shrub that works for pets, but for now I have been using SimPE.  I create the pets in CAS, then either leave them in the sim bin, or move them into an exsisting family (I do that to give them some filthy habits with the learned behaviours cheat object) and open SimPE, there I find the family information (if you didn't give the pets a last name the family will just be called "Pets"), I remove them all from that family, then delete the family altogether.  Then I go to the family information for the stray family (they tend to have a name like Wolesenko or something stupid from Maxis side, but I renamed it to "Strays" when I built the hood), and add them into that family one by one.  Commit, save and "walla" [sic].
Finding the stray family can be the hardest part.  There are by default three families of pets, one is Strays, one is the Adoption Pool, and the last one is what I call "Shop Display Pets" (those are the ones on display in shops, they won't be roaming around anywhere).

[Emma]

I'll try and make some scruffy doggies I'm going to load up my game in a minute, so shouldn't be too long.

[BambuLimey]

You can turn an owned pet into a stray simply by giving or selling the pet to a townie using the "Propose...Give Pet" or "Propose...Sell Pet".

[Emma]

I did 3 of each size. Small scruffy dogs & Large scruffy dogs.

[Gwill]

Oooh, thanks.  My hood is getting nice and shabby.
I've found some nice foxes and other "wildlife" on MTS2, that'd be silly as pets, but great as strays.  I think I need a raccoon too, based on a dog, not a cat; it'd have to be able to knock over trash cans.

[J. M. Pescado]

I've found some nice foxes and other "wildlife" on MTS2, that'd be silly as pets, but great as strays.  I think I need a raccoon too, based on a dog, not a cat; it'd have to be able to knock over trash cans.

Heh, this is why you put concrete in your trashcan. A raccoon cannot knock over your trashcan when it's been weighted into place by 150 pounds of concrete, and whoever kicks it will be in for a nasty surprise.

[Gwill]

I imagine the garbage men get rather annoyed at that.

[Sagana]

Did you find a good raccoon? I haven't found one I like yet.

I've got a lemur but am not all too fond of him. Can't find a monkey I love the fox - he's a great pet for my gypsy camp, most of his actions seem totally appropriate and he looks wonderful hunting wildlife in the woods. (5th pic down, click to make it bigger).

http://miscisims.blogspot.com/

(yes, the caravan flies, and yes the landscape is concrete. the world is sorta post-apocalyptic and the gypsies are the only ones that have green growing stuffes. and a bunch of other disclaimers.)

[Gwill]

This is the only dog-based raccoon I can find.  It's not too bad, but not quite the image that springs to mind when I hear the word Raccoon.  There's also a cat raccoon with more of the colour scheeme I like, but a) it's a cat and b) it looks like a cat.  I've tried TSR, and the Exchange; no luck.
It annoys me how catlike "cats" look in their portraits; even if you manage to pull off a good imitation of another animal it's pretty obvious that it's a cat when you see the portrait.  Well, the whole Pets EP is rather disappointing, but that's another rant, and one everyone has heard before.  Why didn't they include raccoons in the first place?!  And what about pigeons?  They obviously thought about it at some point; the learned behaviour object is a pigeon.
Ooooh, what's that? A new jacket for me?  The sleeves are a bit long...  and what's this strap for...  Hey!  Hng!  Argh!

[J. M. Pescado]

The reason they probably didn't have raccoons is that they apparently existed in TS1, but annoyed the living crap out of people.

[BastDawn]

I liked the Sims 1 raccoon.  Okay, it knocked over the trash, but I had a hacked playground that allowed raccoons to use the slide, which was really cute!  I wish they'd left the raccoon in and taken out the skunk.   

[Zazazu]

Doesn't look like a raccoon to me, but I blame the reference photo. It doesn't really look like much of a raccoon either.

[Sagana]

I haven't seen a pigeon but there are some pretty nice bird recolors, even a little dragon, and an invisible cage so maybe there is or will be something that'll work. The homeless guy with the caged pigeon friends on the roof would be cute.

I dunno why nobody's making rabbits from the caged animals instead of cats and dogs that look and act stupid.

All of the pets in TS1 annoyed the living crap out of me. I actually like the TS2 ones better, just wish there were more options. Then, I installed pets and seasons at the same time, so I was never trying to make it feel like a whole EP all its own.

[akatonbo]

I'd rather have a rabbit-cat than a rabbit-womrat, it'd be more like how we actually keep bunnies in our house (and they are very easily litter-trained), but since it's probably not possible to make a rabbit-cat that looks good in TS2 (pity, I had a nice one in TS1), a womrat-based one would be better than nothing.

I'm rather fond of the birds, and tend to grab all the recolors I can find.

[notveryawesome]

Emma, your scruffy dogs are awesome. True mongrels, all of them!