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 all three games, Sims can befriend and adopt strays, though they must be on their home lots in order to adopt. Strays that are invited into the house will behave like guests. They will use objects that belong to the household, e.g. eating from the food dish and sleeping on the couch.

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 Sims 2: Pets
Like all dogs and cats in The Sims: Unleashed, 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.

In general, strays will visit less frequently than in Unleashed, and fewer of them will visit at any one time. Usually, only one will visit at any given time.

Usually, a stray will have partially learned one or more behaviors, though not always in a positive direction. In addition, some strays will have learned some commands.

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 a list of strays who appear in every neighborhood.

The Sims 3: Pets
Strays reappeared in The Sims 3: Pets. Strays can be found on both community and residential lots, and like the previous games, Sims must build a relationship with them before they are able to adopt them. However, you can use a cheat to instantly add the stray to your household. press 'Ctrl+Shift+C', then type 'testingcheatsenabled true'. Shift click on the pet you want to add to your family and press 'add to family'. It will instantly appear as one of your pets. Having certain objects inside the home may attract strays. Pets are attracted to full food bowls and pet houses. Stray gnomes may also attract them. Stray pets do not have pre-made names and are only known to the player as "Stray Cat", "Stray Dog", or "Wild Horse".

Each stray species is more likely to be found at their respective lot assignment: cats at the cat jungle, dogs at the dog park, and horses at the horse ranch. If you have a pet dog, cat or horse you will sometimes see them interact with another pet. Sometimes they can be interacting with strays.