Raising 20 Puppies or Kittens

Hello everyone. I bring you this quick guide on raising puppies and kittens in response to comments on my Rose Island Prosperity blog, specifically on the update for Round 11: Aiden and Sharon Cipriani in which Sharon has a LTW of raising 20 puppies or kittens. I thought I would invite her over here to my tutorial section to give you a quick run down on how she is handling reaching her LTW. Take it away Sharon!

Thanks Shaunna.

Well, I'm Sharon Cipriani. As you may know I am a busy wife, and mother with a lofty Lifetime Want to raise 20 puppies or kittens. In my case, I chose to focus on puppies, but that doesn't really matter. I will guide you through what I have done to make life a bit easier.

My first order of business was to build a kennel for my dogs. The gates have a convenient locking mechanism that lets you choose to allow or disallow pets. Once I got my two pomeranians into their kennel I simply chose to disallow pets. Now you might think that it is inhumane to not allow them the run of the house, but I have built their area plently large enough to play fetch and for them to strech their legs. Besides, I spend so much time in there with them and they have all of the comforts of home. The kennel contains: 1 dog house, 3 pet beds, 2 chewy bones, 3 food dishes, 1 bathtub, and a couple of shrubs for decoration.

once your two animals have a good enough relaionship with you and eachother (I suggest getting two pets with similar personalities) you can have them "try for puppies with...". The process fo getting them aquainted takes a couple of days together in the kennel, as well as a little time with me to correct them when they were hostile to eachother, and praise them when they were playful.

Before you know it (approx 3 sim days later) you have your puppies! You dogs will have anywhere from 1 to four babies as I believe the maximum number of animals you can have on a lot is six (**players note: I am not 100% sure that this is correct, but in my experience I have not been able to have more than 8 sims and 6 pets per lot**)

It takes about four days for a puppy or kitten to become an adult. And since my LTW is to raise 20 puppies or kittens, I have to see them through to adult hood before I can find suitable homes for them (though all of the techniques I will describe for selling and giving away pets can also apply to puppies). Here are the ways you can send your pups, or full grown dogs out into the world...

Selling and giving away to friends and neighbors:

You can invite someone over or stop a passerby that you might want to sell or give a puppy to. Just start a conversation with them and the option for "Sales..." (to give away choose the option to "give pet...") becomes available. Click on it and pick the name of the pet you wish to sell or give away. If you choose to sell, the sim you are selling to will pay you for the pet. The ammount that you recieve for a pet can be anywhere from a couple hundred to over one thousand simoleans depending on how well the pet is trained. The more they know, the more they are worth! Since my goal is to raise 20 of them, I sell them as soon as they transition to adult dogs so they have not had the chance to gain many skills. I have recieved an averge of 500 simoleans per pet.

Once you have exchanged the money (or not in the case of giving away a pet) the pet is no longer a part of the family and will go home with it's new owner. One thing to be careful about is that when selling your pets to townies (or any other non controlled sim) they get put into the stray pets pool. If you move in a townie that you have sold a pet to, the pet will not come with the owner, instead will remain a stray that will drop by on occasion.

Giving up for Adoption:

This can be hard on both the pet and the sim, but it is a way to add pets to the adoption pool. To give a pet up for adoption, simply use the phone to "call...", "service...", and choose "Pet Adoption Service - Give up Pet".

After a couple of hours a police officer will come to pick up the pet you have choosen to give up for adoption. The pet will now be available by calling the adoption service.

And that concludes my tutorial on raising 20 puppies or kittens. I hope that it has been helpful to you. All you need to do after accomplishing these steps is just rinse and repeat! Good luck, and be sure to let me know if you have any questions.

Advanced Basement Tips

Welcome back! Glad you could make it to the advanced tips section of my basement tutorial. Once again, I am your host, Randy London. Now you are probably thinking "thanks for teaching me the basics Randy, but what if I want to put a basement under an exisiting house?", well I am here to help!

For this tutorial I have built myself a little bachelor pad to use as an example. Your first step will be the same as it was in the Basic Basement tutorial. First, you need to delete the foundation leaving a one square pirimeter.

This will cause your floor to disappear, so if you want to save money, go ahead and delete your floor covering first. Also, any items you have in your house will still have floor squares under them, but don't worry, they will not effect your basement building.

Now you will want to click down to the lowest level of your house and continue with digging the basement as I descrided in the Basic Basement tutorial. But here is a tip...

Walls down (pictured above)

Walls up (pictured above)

Make sure you have your walls in the fully upright position. If you beging to dig the basement with the walls down, the walls will follow your cursor down and can cause confusion. So for best results, keep your walls in the upright position.

Once the basement is dug to the proper depth, go ahead and place your staircase and your flooring. I told you that this would be a breeze! But before I let you go, I want to touch on one other thing. You can dig basements undernearth porches such as the one I have on my temporary bachelor pad.

Simply follow all of the steps I have outlined for you, and before you know it you have expanded the basement!

And that does it for me. This is Randy, signing off. Please feel free to post questions, or suggestions as comments, and Shaunna will be happy to reply!

Back to the Basics / Phishy Tutorials Home

Basic Basement

Randy here! Building a basic basement on an empty lot is a snap. I've started on this 3x3 lot, but any size will do.

First you need to create a foundation (this will also work with the laticed deck found in the same place as the foundations in the build menu).

Next, you'll want to make sure you are on the lowest level of the house, and then you will need to delete the foundation leaving a one square pirimiter around the edges. Your basement area will be within the interior space that you deleted.

That seems easy enough, right? Well, on to the next step and here is where it can get a bit tricky. Don't worry, I will be here to guide you through the rest of the tutorial.

You will need to paint the interior of the walls with a paint or wallpaper that has a molding along the floor. This will be your depth guide for digging your basement. Personally, I prefer wallpaper as it seems to work a bit better, but any type of wallcovering with a kick molding should work just fine.

Next get out your lower terrain tool from the build menu. Start lowering the terrain a few clicks at a time. Remeber, slow and steady wins the race. I prefer to do this in a corner to get a better view, but it can be lowered at any point along the wall. Continue to lower a few squares until the molding along the bottom of the wallcovering is visable.

Don't worry it doesn't have to be perfectly even on all four corners. As long as the line along the wall is even, you will be all set.

This is that tricky part I was talking about earlier. Stick with me, we will get through it. Here is a tip to getting the depth just right...

If you can see ANY wall color under your molding youv'e dug too deep! Click undo...undo is your BEST FRIEND!

Now lets move on to lowering the rest of the floor.

Get out the level terrain tool and start from the corner and drag the mouse along the ground to bring the entire area down to the point you dug.

This might take a couple of times, but just work from the low point to the high points and you will get the job done. Rember NOT to lower the area within the one square pirimeter. And here is why...

When you lower the ground, it creates a slope from the normal ground level. The one square pirimeter will keep this slope enclosed in the foundation.

And viola! A hole in the ground! Kidding, actually it is almost your basement. Click back up to the main level of the house.

You might notice some funky floating tiles...but have no fear, Randy is here.

Just cover those bad boys with floor tiles of your choosing and poof!

They should snap right back into place.

Your probably asking yourself, "But Randy, now that it is all covered with floor tiles, how am I supposed to get into my new basement?" Well, with stairs of course!

First clear an area of four squares in your chosen location. A standard staircase will require at least this many squares of clearance. And I do suggest you use a standard staircase as it will not fit if your basement is too deep or too shallow. The staircases that extend to any size will fit no matter what, but may cause your basement to function improperly if it is the wrong depth. Once you have confirmed that a standard staircase fits, feel free to add any staircase you desire.

Click back down into the basement and place your staircase.

The final test is to send your sims down into the basement just to bbe sure everything is functioning properly.

And check it out! We did it!

Wait! I almost forgot to tell you. You can add rooms in your basement as you would on any other floor of the house.

Well, that does it, you can now create a basic basement for your sims homes. If you would like some advanced tips click below to continue one to part 2.

Back to Phishy Tutorials / Continue to Advanced Basement Tips

Pick a Tutorial!

Busy wife, mother, and working girl Sharon Cipriani walks you through how she is handling achieving her LTW of raising 20 puppies or kittens. Find out her secrets to success: Raising 20 puppies or kittens

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Hi! I'm Randy London, and you may know me from the Cedar Park Prosperity Challenge. I am here because I heard that you were interested in learing how to make a basement for your sims. Well, look no further...just click below to get started!

Basic Basements
Advanced Basements