A problem started with one families cat who I noticed was really hungry, so as I run the game always with controlpets on I tried to direct her to eat but there were no actions available on the bowl, I tried emptying and cleaning the bowl, buying a new bowl, forcing an error or the cat to reset her. So I thought maybe the issue was she was not trained to eat pet food? but I never deliberately train a pet to eat pet food and I've never had this problem, but I decide anyway to direct her to eat sim food that's on the counter with the thought of scolding her enough that she'll learn. Well this made no difference and I could never get this cat to eat, not by calling her to eat using a sim, not by directing her and my repetitive scolding was making no change. Eventually I made the cat a stray and adopted a new cat, which does not have this trouble and will always eat.

In my hood many more sims bought/adopted or raised new cats and dogs and now there is a second afflicted pet in a different household, he won't eat either, same problem. I've been trying different bowls, clean, new, not blocked by anything, calling him to eat, directing him, I used Christianlov's Learned Behaviour and Command Tool to teach him to eat pet food, no luck.

It's not game breaking, but I would hate to lose more pets because they cannot eat. And as quirky as it would be to have a pet that's picky with their eating habits, I don't have the time to prepare him gourmet meals each day. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Make a full backup, remove your download folder and try then. You always need to exclude a cc problem first because if the cause is in your download folder you need to either find it or live with it.

Are you on disks or UC? On disks are you patched? If on UC go into Origin and right click and fix the game.

Thanks for the suggestions, I've gotten it fixed! I'm not entirely sure what fixed it, I did the repair and took out my downloads folder, he couldn't eat from the existing bowl but could eat from a new bowl. I put my downloads back in and he still couldn't eat from the existing bowl, but I purchased a new one which he couldn't eat from at first but I called him to eat using my sim to which he came and ate which previously he would not do and since that I am now able to direct him to eat!

It's still a bit of a mystery what the problem was but for now I'll be glad this chappy can eat.