How realistic (and sad) is that?

I wish they had an option to have a rescue centre as a business. Stray cats and dogs could be caught and dropped off. Sims could come in and adopt the pets like buying objects in a normal retail store. I hate seeing sick strays around. I’ve started to delete any strays I see.

I decided to make a sim basically run a home based rescue center. So now and then I put the lot traits up.... the animals come. I put out food and make friends and adopt them. When my sim needs a break... I take the traits off, the strays that she didn't have time to friend leave the area eventually... You can always move the pets to a good family via managed worlds when you train them a little (or don't train them).This isn't in BB by the way... there are always strays there. None of them will starve to death though.
I guess when people talk about this being an oversight it bothers me, because I think they took into account how many people like to play this time around, and included different ways to approach doing that. Not everyone wants strays everywhere in every type of story they chose to explore or play out. We have worlds with strays built in. We can have stray free worlds if we want. We have lot traits to bring strays in other areas (and the ability to take those traits off with the push of a button).
I change traits on my lots sometimes daily sometimes depending on what I want my sim to accomplish. I do wish we had a few more lot trait slots though.

That's a downside to it, doesn't really make any sense lol.

@Sjofn Thank you! I did not know those bushes would work for the pets - I just put them on on of my sim's lot and they do! But - as usual - it is either feast or famine with the sims 4 - now the cats are constantly in the bushes!

and dog houses are cruel.

I've seen quite a few sick and bone thinned cats and dogs in my game from time to time. It's so sad to see them. I end up using the enable free build and put some food bowls down for them.

OP has answer his own question: Change the title into the statement 'How/SO unrealistic and sad is it'. In TS2, strays had a common sense to consume food from the remaining pet bowl's. Once again the picture shows how lack of care and passion for implementing details gurus have. They're truly embracing the weirder unwanted stories in our game.

"AprilDawn;c-16397918" wrote:
@Sjofn Thank you! I did not know those bushes would work for the pets - I just put them on on of my sim's lot and they do! But - as usual - it is either feast or famine with the sims 4 - now the cats are constantly in the bushes!

Heh, yeah, my cat dives in all the time now, when she never bothered to wander off the lot to get into trouble when the household was still in the Bay. Silly!

Yeah it is terrible. I just downloaded the no strays mod because I didn't want to see that all the time.

My niece was just telling me she came up with a great idea in her game - she did not buy or make any of her sims any pets and instead has her sims go to BB and befriend the strays - then adopts them.

I'll have to try that - although my first sim I put in BB - did in fact befriend and adopted a big poodle looking dog her first day there. But I never thought of doing all my sims like that and bringing them to BB just to meet and adopt strays - as there are no strays in any of my other worlds. I think I'll follow my nieces idea.