Cats keep running away (rant)

[Nindigo]

I think I'm done having cats (except for Patches). They run away no matter what I do, leaving my Sims sad for a week or so. Patches never do or did, however. Perhaps because he's affectionate? In any other case, when I switch to a household with a cat, it runs away almost immediately, because apparently, Sims don't care for it when I don't play them. And I can't just drop everything and ignore screaming toddlers (that will otherwise get taken away) to pet a friggin' sensitive cat, so it won't run away Dogs seem less prone to this behavior, so I'm sticking to them for now. *Heavy sigh*

Help. Does anyone else experience this with cats?

Sorry for being negative. But I really like the cats and want them in my household, just not on the expensive of my sanity and my Sims well-being.

[Playalot]

This thread here talks about runaway pets a little. MarianT says that advertising online speeds up the return rate. Apart from that I deleted all the pets out of my households a while ago as they are just too much work to deal with. I've left a few with some of my placed townies so when I want a cat/dog fix I just go visit with them.

Maybe if just before you swap households if your current played sim were to go visit that household and feed/play with the pet/toddler etc then when you swapped over the pets/toddlers would be in better shape? I sometimes do that when I'm swapping to a toddler household and it does seem to work if you them swap played households as soon as your 1st sim gets home.

[Brian_Z]

I realize how old this is, but there's an exploit to bring your runaways home right away.  Click your missing kitty's thumbnail, and the view will snap to some location on the map.  You won't see the cat, but... send a household member to that location, and your cat will immediately come home as soon as they get there.