Personally I tend to find pets rather annoying and prefer them to be optional. In sims 2 stray cats and dogs kept messing up your stuff and you couldn't kick them off your property for it. It's like that duck hunt dog all over again.
I only had pets in that one because back then me and my sister shared a computer for it and we bought the expansion packs in turns and she wanted pets.
But people have different tastes. That's why it's also good to keep the supernaturals to expansions so people can leave those out if they wish.
