With the release of My First Pet Stuff for EA’s The Sims 4: Cats & Dogs, interest in our simulated furry friends is at an all-time high.
Companion animals play a key role in all of our lives. Our pets live with us, grow with us, laugh and cry with us – they’re truly a part of the family. And the same is true for our Sim counterparts.
While there already are a lot of things to do with pets in the base game, the simulation is never complete. At least that’s what TS4 modders and CC creators seem to believe, and who am I to object?
For those of you who want to have even more fun with your little four-legged bundles of love, here are the absolute best pet-related mods every made, all downloadable for free!
We start with a small yet meaningful tweak that’ll make the pet-owning experience considerably less work-heavy.
In the base game, pets tend to barf with more frequency than even real pets.
The game’s base settings let them barf once every 30-60 minutes on average. Which is way too often.
This mod by creator Yakfarm simply increases the cooldown for the barfing action to 150-240 minutes, giving your sims more time to take care of themselves.
Another amazing mod to help you take care of your pets is the Playable Pets Mod, which lets you control your furry friends so they eat, drink, sleep or play whenever you tell them to.
This mod doesn’t add any new pet interactions. But simply lets you control them in the same way you would a sim.
It helps a lot with pet contests, training and simply keeping them from starving to death or relieving themselves in the carpet because the AI stupidly neglected to take care of itself.
Some people just come into the world to love and interact with animals of all shapes and sizes.
And that’s what makes them feel fulfillment in life.
Thanks to modder Edespino, your sims can now embody these feelings through the Animal Lover trait.
This pushes them to play with their pets, collect frogs, become proficient at fishing, and makes them interested in becoming veterinarians – all through a variety of custom whims.
The trait also enables them to learn both fishing and veterinarian skills much faster, so they’ll be able to successfully follow their dreams!
With the recent addition of small animals came a whole slew of mods to flesh-out interaction with the tiny critters.
This mod by creator TwilightSims simply adds a couple of traits for Sims with strong feelings about small animals.
The “Loves Small Pets” trait will make them feel playful when interacting with them, while the “Hates Small Pets” one will make them feel uncomfortable around small creatures like hedgehogs and rats.
It also adds one for the marine-inclined, “Fish Fanatic”, which works just like Loves Small Pets… except it triggers when interacting with fish tanks or fishing.
The Sims has always had its fair share of bugs. It’d be crazy to expect such a complex simulation not to have a couple of hiccups.
One of the most egregious ones yet unfixed in the base game is a pet’s apparent inability to find their litter boxes, food bowls, and even beds if they’re not on the same floor.
This often leads to uncomfortable situations like starving pets and wet carpets, which your sim will have to spend their precious time fixing.
Thanks to modder Deathcofi, it only takes a simple install to fix this issue and make your pets all the more self-sufficient.
Well, calling them “actual dragons” might be a bit much. This amazing mod by The Kalino replaces large dog meshes for that of small dragons, making your canine companions into veritable wyverns. Complete with wings and horns.
There are several colors available with tails, horns, and wings that you can mix and match to create the perfect magical familiar for your spellcaster sim.
The Sims’ playerbase presents a sizable overlap with K-Pop fans. In part because there are simply so many nowadays.
For those fans, creator BeccAi has made these adorable tiny BTS hoodies for small dogs. This has several designs to show your love for one of the biggest pop groups in recent memory.
You probably have one just like these in your own closet, don’t you?
Everyone knows Sailor Moon. It’s one of the most successful magical girl anime series ever, and the love towards the magical version of the Spice Girls spans multiple generations.
Creator Kalewa-a is a big fan of the series. So they made this little cat accessory to put some classic anime magic into their game.
It’s a crescent moon just like the one that famous black cat Luna has in the series, available in different colors to suit your tastes.
Now we only need a mod that turns your sims into magical girls.
People have walked their dogs ever since keeping them as pets became a thing.
But have you ever seen somebody walking their cat?
Cats aren’t meant to be put on a leash and paraded around… and yet, some degenerates still do. And I have to admit few things are cuter than a grumpy cat letting themselves be dragged through the floor by a struggling owner.
Thanks to this mod by LittleMsSam, your Sims can now walk their cats as well. Except the cat will actually cooperate.
In real life, dogs want attention all the time. And cats don’t care about your sleeping schedule when it’s time to eat. It’s par for the course when you have a pet!
That said, pets in The Sims 4 are so needy it hurts. Quite literally!
It hurts your career, your social life, your sleep schedule… Sim pets are a full-time job.
This mod by SNTHE greatly diminishes their need for human attention by making their motive bars deplete much slower, giving your Sims their life back.
You’ll still have to play with them or clean the floor from time to time, but it’s much more manageable.
Eyes are the windows of the soul. And few creatures have eyes as mysterious and captivating as our feline friends.
This mod by MadameChvlr seeks to port some of this beauty to The Sims 4 with 10 sets of big, round and adorable eyes that are a considerable improvement over the somewhat soulless ones in the base game.
Variety is the spice of life, and ten extra sets of eyes isn’t nearly enough for the average Sims player.
Proficient creator PralineSims offers us this massive collection of 54 new colors and textures to fill your cat’s ocular cavities.
Not only does it include a wide variety of colors, but also some unique ones like cloudy blind eyes and even unnatural marble eyes that make your feline friend look like a demon in kitten’s fur.
If you like these, be sure to check PralineSims’ TheSimsResource profile for more.
If you’re truly committed to the dog-lover life, you want to give your canine friends the best money can buy.
This massive CC pack by creator PinkZombieCupcakes gives you access to 48 different Burberry sweater designs to make your small dogs look adorable and warm.
Whether you like sober plaid, colorful stripes, or playful paw print – you’ll find something you like here.
Just because they’re dogs doesn’t mean they don’t want to dress well!
The recent My First Pet Stuff pack added plenty of new small animals for you to play with, but why not take it all the way and turn your home into a veritable small animal zoo?
This set actually comes with two packs (one and two) by The Kalino.
It adds 20 new critters to The Sims 4, including squirrels, chinchillas, lizards, and even turtles to care for in the same way you’d care for the official small animals.
In addition it features six small animal cage re-colors with more natural tones to help preserve your carefully designed interiors cohesive and tasteful.
Most Sims are pretty fond of animals. But in real life, some people are truly obsessed with our companions on planet Earth.
This mod by IlkaVelle lets your Sims become passionate about them as well thanks to the Applied Animal Behaviorist aspiration, which essentially means they want to become the Dog Whisperer.
A sim with this aspiration will always want to be around animals, befriending and training them so they can live in harmony with humans and perform better in contests.
Achieve every objective in this aspiration and you’ll get the Behaviorist Wisdom trait. From this it helps you reach a point where you’re so good at communicating with animals, they’ll be able to fill their motives just by having a comforting talk with them.
Out of every amazing pet-centric mod we’ve covered in this list, my favorite is Animal Rescue by PurpleThistles.
It adds a very fleshed-out Animal Rescuer career to The Sims 4.
Sims following this career path will make adopting strays, training them to be exemplar pets, and putting them up for adoption.
They’ll hone their skills, expand their business, and give many lonely animals a new home.
It also adds statistics showing how many pets your animal rescuer has adopted, spayed, or re-homed throughout their career. So at the end of their lives they can look back and feel like they truly made a difference.
Nelson Chitty is a Venezuelan expat living in Argentina. He’s a writer and translator passionate about history and foreign cultures. His ideal weekend is spent between leisurely playing games of Civilization VI and looking for the next seinen anime to marathon.
