Bird Hotel - Cage with Animated Pet Goldfinch (Requires Cats and Dogs)

Imagine my frustration when I saw that For Rent included a beautiful wooden birdcage...without a bird inside of it! Why must EA torture me so? Anyway, I spent approximately three billion hours figuring out how to put a bird in there so I could live out my illegal pet ownership fantasies.

HOW IT WORKS
Your re-nameable Goldfinch will turn its head back and forth and make little chirping noises. Interacting with it will raise the relationship bar (it is functionally immortal, so don't be afraid to get attached). When your Sim is in the room and is standing near the cage, they will get a passive happy moodlet from its presence. Cats may become obsessed with the bird if they have the right temperament.



INTERACTIONS
• Observe: Fills the Fun Need and reduces negative moodlets. If your Sim is an Animal Enthusiast, Loves the Outdoors, has the Outdoorsy lifestyle, or is in the Vet career, they will gain Fun faster. Watching the bird increases the Vet skill and advances the Conservationist career. May occur autonomously.
• Discuss Flights of Fancy: Fills the Social Need. If your Sim is Sad, they gain the Share Your Birdens option, which has the potential to resolve their Sad moodlet (also helps with grief). Sims with relevant traits will also gain Fun. Increases the Charisma skill or the Social skill in children. May occur autonomously.
• Give Treat: By default, the food and water dishes are full, but for the low, low cost of §5, your Sim will sparkle-wave and "give them a treat". (Use your imagination. To keep the pack requirements to a minimum, I had to restrict myself to a relatively small number of animations, which limited what I could do). Your Sim can only give one treat every 6 hours, but other Sims in the household can sneak in and give the bird another one on the down-low!
• Lavish with Praise: Your Sim will recite dramatic poetry to the bird. If it deems your performance satisfactory, it will reward you with a Goldfinch feather. The higher your Charisma skill, the more likely you will get a feather!



KNOWN ISSUES
• This is not an animal object; it's a VFX generator. It borrows the looping Goldfinch effect from the Backyard Stuff bird-feeder. It's low res and janky - this is EA's fault, not mine. The Sims 4 can only load a limited number of VFX at a time, so the game comes with a built-in feature that stops 'extraneous' VFX from continuing to play. What this means functionally is that the Goldfinch will disappear if your active Sim strays too far from the cage (goes jogging, etc.). When that happens, click on it and select Put Bird Back in Cage. This will unglitchify it. (This could be a useful roleplaying feature, since the bird can presumably can let itself out whenever it wants, lol).
• I'm still working on getting the sleeping Zzzz's to display reliably.

Stats:
• Requires Cats and Dogs Expansion Pack
• 12 Swatches
• §50. Find it in Build/Buy by searching Bird Hotel or Naunakht

Note: Like any object with custom tuning, the Bird Hotel might break after an update! Always keep these sorts of items in a separate folder, so that if you start getting errors, the likely culprits are all in one place.