Stray

A stray is a cat or dog that does not belong to any Sim. Strays are very much like townies, except that they are animals. However, strays who enter a residential lot will usually stay a while, instead of just walking by as townies do.

Strays were first introduced in The Sims: Unleashed, and reappeared in The Sims 2: Pets and The Sims 3: Pets. In both games, Sims can befriend and adopt strays, though they must be on their home lots in order to adopt.

Dogs

 * Spike Strays
 * Buzz Strays
 * Fifi Strays
 * Cher Strays

Cats

 * Cali Strays
 * Spork Strays
 * Aristotle Strays
 * Fluffly Strays

Unlike Townies in other expansion packs of The Sims, the game does not randomly generate the Strays: they are the same in every neighborhood, and in all games. All the default strays in Unleashed have zero personality points and no skills. They can learn skills, but their lack of personality points can only be changed if the player uses a third-party program or hacked object.

The game will not replace strays who are adopted, however, a cat or dog owned by player-controlled Sims will join the Strays family if it is neglected.

The easiest way to force this is to wall up a pet in a room with nothing but a food bowl. Keep the food bowl full and wait until the pet's Fun and Social become totally red. Then take away the food bowl. As the pet's hunger declines, with its Fun and Social in the red already, its overall mood should drop sufficiently that it will run away before it starves.

The Sims 2: Pets
Like all dogs and cats in Pets, strays have no last name. The pre-made strays are the same in all neighborhoods and all games, but if a stray is adopted, the game will generate a random replacement with a random name. The Pack leader and other wolves have random names.

When the Pets patch or a later expansion pack is installed, strays will no longer visit community lots unless a player-controlled Sim is on that lot with one of his or her pets. This can be fixed by using this mod.

Here is the list of strays who appear in every neighborhood.

The Sims 3: Pets
Strays reappeared in The Sims 3: Pets. Like the previous games, they can be adopted.