Welp. I'm obviously on the dissenting end of this discussion.
I for one absolutely do think pets should take up a slot for the household, preceisly because the are family. And well, if babies which are even more of an object than pets count towards the total household count (which they do. Even a pregnant Sim adds two to the whole household count) why shouldn't pets count towards the total household count as well?
And I think I'd be miffed if they did remove pets taking up a household slot, since it would feel like they're not a part of the family anymore. I mean I'm upset bunnies can't be added to the household and I'm hoping someone can find a way to cheat them into the house. So if they removed pets as counting as a family member I would be majorly upset. My cats are my family and they should be counted as such.
ETA: Now if they added a seperate "pets" tab. And increased the amount of sims you can have in the household, I would be fine if they moved them to this seperate tab, and the household number displays something like 10: 8 Sims + 2 pets, I'd be fine with it. But pets not being counted as sims in terms of adding to the household count would bother me.
ETA 2: Reading through these responses, it seems the problem lies more in the limit of 8 sims per household rather than the pets taking up a slot. I think the best compromise would be to increase the limit to either 10 or 12. That way those of us who want pets counted towards the household total so they feel more like family, don't lose out on anything. And those who want to play with large families don't lose out either.
And also, like some people on here believe people wanting pets to be counted towards the household total are selfish since they prefer smaller families + pets... I can easily say the same to those of you who think pets shouldn't count towards the total household account simply because you want to play with huge families that may or may not have pets.
I personally have no use for playing with more than 8 Sims unless it's because I want 1-2 normal sims and like 10 pets. But for those of you do play large families, I can see why you'd want more than 8 sims. And that's totally fine. All I'm asking for is have a little grace for those of us who do want our pets counted and push for the "more than 8 sims" option as opposed to the "don't count pets" option.
