These Hints, Tips and Ideas are a collection of the best from our busy forums and chat. Enjoy!

Relationships

• Being animal themselves, werewolves stand a good chance of being able to successfully pet a Skunk without being sprayed.
• Servo's make great skunk shoo'ers, as they have no Hygiene or Comfort needs. Spraying will not affect them, so if you have Open for Business, keep a Servo handy in the garden!
• The 8pm werewolf transformation can frighten, or realize werewolf related fears in Sims in the same room, so move lycanthropic Sims to enclosed rooms before they change.

               
 Skunks can be friends too!        Servo: Immune to spraying          Werewolf transformation
 

Careers & Skills

• Werewolves (especially ones with high Charisma) make the most efficient pet trainers.
• Teaching birds to talk makes them valuable, and an always available source of social satisfaction.
• The "Kibble of Life" is an Aspiration Reward Objects that Sims can buy for their pets to eat from. It comes with 5 charges, each of which can be used to extend an animals life by 3 days. The 5 green jewels around the bowl will each turn red with use (can also be used as a food bowl).
• Sims with a home business in OFB can make money taking on free animals (from Create-A-Pet or strays), training them up and selling them in their stores.
• Energy and Hygiene will not affect a working animal's job performance, but some quality play time before the car pool arrives can provide a real boost.
• If you want to train your pets quickly, always max out on Genius. You may miss out on some of their amusing behaviour, but you will have a well-mannered animal!

               
      The sleep won't last long!              The "Kibble of Life"        A Pet Store with Open for Business

Personalities

• To see an animal offspring's trait details, use the phone to register the pet, then look it up in breed Bin of Create a Pet.
• "Lycanthropic-B" is the potion cure for werewolves. It can be bought from the Pet Trainer or (if Nightlife is installed) the Nomadic Matchmaker.

         
Animal offspring's trait details       Cheep 'n Nasty to Finiky Pets

Food

• Finicky pets are unlikely to eat from the "Good Value Pet Bowl".

Death

• Pets can only die of old age and their ghosts will interact only with other ghosts (including Sim ghosts)

Doggy death by Old Age only!

Build Mode

• The new Diagonal Room Tool also works with half-height walls and fences. Hold Ctrl+D to toggle. To use the Octagonal Room Tool, use CTRL+E.
• Quarter Tile floors are another new addition, allowing you make elaborate patterns from existing floors. To use this feature, press Ctrl+F. Delete a quarter of an existing tile by holding Ctrl.
• Floor tiles can be rotated with Pets. Use the < > keys to turn them before placing in the game.
• Edgers can be used to tidy up edges between two floor types and can be found in the Build Mode>>Miscellaneous>>Fence Tool. They have no divisional functionality in the game and are purely to improve visuals for our purposes, not Sims.
• You can prevent pets from running away be surrounding the Lot with a fence and gate, and setting the gate to exclude pet use.

                       
  Quarter-tile floor patterns         Nice neat edges between floors         Managing Collections in Pets

Buy Mode

• In Pets, buy/build mode "Collections" have been overhauled and now allow for renaming, rearranging and icon changes. Move items around by dragging them, or using the keyboard cursor keys (up, down, left, right).

Gameplay

• Avoid placing Womrat cages in Sims' bedrooms. When the Womrat uses its wheel it will wake sleeping Sims
• Like the Womrat, keep the bird cage out of Sims' bedroom to avoid being woken by squawking.
• With Pets, doors in the house can be locked to exclude animals from particular areas.
• The "Los Gatos Condominium" is a good investment for Sims with cats. It sleeps 4 at a time, does not cause any ownership arguments and never needs cleaning (but it doesn't allow or pet WooHoo).
• Sims will not bathe even the dirtiest of dogs autonomously; they have to be directed to do it.

         
The "Los Gatos Condominium"           Bathtime for dirty dogs!    

• Buying a collar for your pets makes their return far more likely should they run away.
• Using the "Check Collar" interaction on a stray animal allows your Sim to return the pet to another of your playable Sims
• Puppies and Kittens cannot climb stairs or use elevators, but like toddlers, they can be carried on either by Sims.
• Generally, if a Sim receives an adult pet as a child, the pet will die around the same time the Sim becomes an elder. If the pet reproduces around the middle of its adult stage, the child Sim should live to see 2 or 3 generations of the pet's line.
• Unlock all bonus objects for your Pets by using our Pets Codes section here at TSR.

                   
     Shopping for a Collar             Pets must be carried on stairs           Bonus Pet Codes at TSR!