How does a pet familiar work?

"GrumpyGlowfish;c-17246921" wrote:
Possibly a dumb question, but how exactly do you make a cat or a dog your sim's familiar in the first place? I've tried several times by clicking on them and choosing Magic => Make familiar (or something like that), but it always failed, producing nothing but black smoke and at one point a curse, and as usual with TS4, I don't know if that's a bug or intended. My witches are still of fairly low ranks, however. Do you need to be of a certain rank or have a certain perk to be able to do that?

I'm really not sure if you need to be of a certain rank. My sim was a Neophyte and he managed to bind his pet racoon in a single try. There will be a notification telling you that your pet has become your familiar.