I bred raccoons and cats in The Sims 4 to create the cutest animal ever: the red panda

I submit that the cutest creature in the world is the red panda. See above! That's all the proof I need, and I want one to call my own. And, using The Sims 4: Cats & Dogs expansion, I'm not only going to get one, I'm going to create one.

In addition to dogs and cats, the expansion has raccoons. And, just as you can breed different kinds of cats together, you can breed raccoons with cats (or other raccoons) too. Raccoons basically look like red pandas, only they're not red and they have more of a vermin-y feel to them (I still think they're cute, though). Makes sense that the way to generate a red panda is to order my raccoon to have sex with a red cat. I mean, right? If you mix a man and a fly in a teleporter and the result is a man-fly, then mixing a raccoon with a red cat should give you a red-raccoon cat, which is basically a red panda.

I find an American Longhair that looks suitably reddish-orange, seen above vomiting what I assume is a wad of its reddish-orange hair. Then I breed it with my raccoon, who I've named Raccoony Jim because I'm a really good and imaginative writer.

And the result?

Well, hm. It's definitely cute as heck. I mean, just look at that earnest face! But it is definitely also not red as heck. Nothing red at all about my first generation of raccoon cat abominations. It's both raccoon-y and cat-like, though, so I feel like it's a promising start, and let's face it, if my first attempt at birthing a red panda worked this would be a pretty short article.

I need more red, clearly. I pick a very red cat indeed, a Somali, a cat I can safely say could be none-more red, and mate it with my not-red raccoon cat.

Okay. Now I'm confused. I made a raccoon have sex with a reddish cat, and then made its child have sex with an even redder cat, and now I've got a white cat?Plus, the tail is about the only thing looking even remotely raccoon-like at this point. The rest just looks like some dumb not-red cat.

I grab a LaPerm, which is somehow even more red than the Somali, and quickly mix its DNA with my dumb white barely-even-a-raccoon-anymore offspring.

Okay! Color-wise, we're getting somewhere. The red genes are in full effect. I'm happy to have made some advances toward successful coloring, but the thing is, this creature doesn't look remotely raccoon-like, or -ish, or even -esque. It just looks like a cat at this point.

Time to put some more raccoon into the mix. I grab another raccoon out of whatever enormous box I am having all these animals shipped to my house in, and breed it with my third-generation whatsit.

Okay, seriously? I've slowly (well, quickly) bred nearly all the raccoon genes out of my line of red cat-things, and then the moment I add some raccoon DNA back in, I'm suddenly left with basically 100% raccoon again? That doesn't make any sense. I can't believe this game that lets you mate raccoons and cats could be so wildly inaccurate.

Time to get completely unethical. I'm certain I've got the genes I need to create the red panda of my dreams, I just need to mutate them. I edit the relationships between this latest raccoon-beast (gen 4) and my very red cat-monster (gen 3). Now that I've told the game they're not related, I can basically have a pet breed with its own parent.

Don't judge them, they don't know what they're doing. Don't judge me, either, though there's every reason to.

It's definitely not the result I was hoping for when I made a raccoon have sex with its own mother

Well, this inbred catcoon doesn't look happy. And I am certainly not happy either. At least there are some raccoony markings on its face, but the red is all gone and it's definitely not the result I was hoping for when I made a raccoon have sex with its own mother.

Time to really pull out the stops, by editing enough relationships to make this newest child (version 5) have sex with its great-great-grandfather (version 1), the first child born of raccoon and cat in what has become a very crowded and deeply unethical household.

Well. Okay. Okay! I mean, it's not really looking like a red panda, but it's got a little red to it, and it's definitely got some cat bits, and it's also retained some raccoonishness. Progress!

I had to break the laws of science and nature and family, but I feel like, with ten or twenty more iterations and plenty of selective inbreeding and parent-humping, I will eventually, probably, possibly, wind up with a red panda. I just need to introduce some black for a the legs, reverse the eyemarkings a bit, work on the tail some more, and...

Ah, screw it. I'll just paint the damn thing.

Done.

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Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.