Unleashed, And How Do You Care For It?

The Sims: Unleashed was the very first time that our option to “play with life” included the lives of our animals, too, bringing household pets of all species and sizes into our houses to add some furry friends to the family at last.

After you get a pet in The Sims, you’ll need to be sure you’re ready to care for it – having an animal is a big responsibility, after all! You’ll need to purchase any of the pet items required to care for pets in The Sims 1, and build happy relationships with your fluffy new family members.

How Do You Get A Pet?

Buy One From Old Town

Since the option to customize a pet for your family wasn’t introduced until later in The Sims series, you’ll need to obtain a pet in one of the other methods in the game. The most straightforward way to get a new pet in The Sims: Unleashed is to buy a pet from Old Town, the neighborhood included with The Sims 1 Deluxe version in 2025 for easy access to anything you might need for pets and their care.

If you’d like a brief overview of the animal you’re looking to adopt, you can “shop for” animals to receive a brief summary from the shopkeeper on why that may just be the pet for you.

While you can technically buy a pet from any shop that has the proper displays to sell them, your safest bet when you’re looking to bring home a new fuzzy friend (or the items you’ll need to care for them) from the Pet Paradise shop in Old Town. As you may imagine of a lotwith this name, you’ll find anything you need to tend to your pets, including the animals themselves. Before buying a pet, though, consider your Sim’s lifestyle, since some pets need more care than others.

When clicking on the displays for cats and dogs at Pet Paradise in The Sims 1, you’ll have the option to either play with the animal or adopt it for a one-time fee. The list of pets for sale at Pet Paradise in the original Sims game includes:

• Small tank animals like turtles, iguanas, and goldfish, which require only specific cages and minimal interaction to thrive. You’ll find them in the darker-colored shop out front at Pet Paradise with the cafe cart by the door. They’ll be sent to your Sim’s inventory upon purchased and must be displayed once you get home.
• Birds, which require a bit more direct care and can even help increase your Charisma skill. Love birds and budgies are available for purchase from the supply store in Pet Paradise, and you can check out larger birds to see if you want to buy one using Buy mode back home.
• Cats and dogs, the most interactive of the pets available in the game with the broadest range of features and relationship expansion, can be purchased from the middle store at Pet Paradise. They’ve got personalities that inform the way they behave and their willingness to learn animal skills, too. They each cost §399 to purchase.
  • You cannot customize a cat or dog’s appearance, nor can you see its personality point allocations when purchasing it from Pet Paradise – that’s a surprise for once you get home with your new friend.

You can even get a dragon as a pet if you’re more into mythical creatures than real ones! Additionally, guinea pigs were added with Livin’ Large and can be purchased at home in Buy mode, but beware of guinea pig disease if their cages get too dirty!

Adopt Strays

You’ve probably seen the variety of animals wandering across your lot from time to time, or strays out and about when you visit public lots (not the raccoons, though, unfortunately). If you’ve been regularly interacting with an animal you see in this fashion, you’ll eventually be given the option to adopt the stray animal into your home.

To trigger the option to adopt a stray pet, you’ll need to interact with it on your home lot with a high relationship. Cycle through your social options with the pet until you see the option to “Adopt” appear on the social menu. This requires a rather high relationship meter with the animal, though, so you’ll need to put in the work to get close to one another before it trusts you enough to join your family.

Breed Your Animals

While this only works with cats and dogs, you can opt to have two adult animals of the same species “Snuggle” for a while in the hopes of making the magic happen. You’ll see a pop up asking if you want to have kittens or puppies (depending on the animals, of course), and agreeing to do so makes a tent appear nearby much like cribs when you agree to have a child.

You can’t tend to the babies yourself – it’s up to the mother to care for them for the earliest days of their lives, before they grow into adults after three full in-game days. You’ll need to be sure you’re keeping mom happy, since happy pets will check on their litters autonomously, while unhappy pets will need to be directed and sometimes refuse. You can have these pets taken away from you, so be sure they’re happy and tended to!

Once the three days has passed and your pet’s litter has grown up, you’ll be able to decide whether to keep or sell the baby. You’ll earn cash based on the parents’ traits and skills if you choose to sell a puppy or kitten, but keeping them adds them to the family immediately so they can begin acting like any other pet in The Sims.

What Do Pets Need For Care?

Cats And Dogs

Unlike their smaller counterparts, cats and dogs are more active pets and will require more dedicated time and attention, dogs more so than cats. You’ll need to be sure you have food and water bowls, a bed, and toys for any pet you get, since they’ve got motives like your Sims. They’ll need to eat, sleep, and use the bathroom as well, so keep an eye on how your pets are doing, ensuring bowls are filled and beds are warm at any given time. A few simoleons will be deducted from the household funds anytime you fill a pet bowl with food.

You can even buy individualized collars for your pets, though it’s the only way you’re able to customize a pet’s appearance.

You’ll need to socialize with your cats and dogs much more than small pets, and you’ll see them interacting with one another fairly often as well. Cats will hunt pests on the lot from time to time when they’re happy and well-loved, while family dogs will bring in the newspaper for your Sims and may chase off that pesky raccoon in the garbage.

Since they don’t have cages like the small pets, you’ll need to housebreak cats and dogs so they don’t leave messes around your home. Cats will require a litter box to do this, while dogs will need to be called outside when they need to use the bathroom and praised when they relieve themselves outside of the home.

Small Animals

For smaller animals, you’ll find they need remarkably less care and keeping than mammalian pets in The Sims. Assuming you have purchased the right cage for the type of animal you’re getting, you’ll be able to buy the animal from Pet Paradise and pop it into that tank once you get home. Check in now and again to feed them and clean the tank to ensure their needs are met.

Items for your pets can be obtained in the Pets section of the Miscellanious Buy mode menu, so be Other than that, though, smaller animals are more limited in their socialization as well. You can play with and talk to your small pets, but they’re nowhere near as interactive as cats and dogs.