Catz and Dogz: A History and Resources

Petz 5 was a game I enjoyed in my childhood a lot, given to me by my father. I loved it so much, where you could adopt virtual catz and dogz to look after. Lets go shortly into the history first though: 

The series starts in 1995 with Dogz, the premise of the game is that you are able to adopt a virtual pet from a few different breeds. From there, you can interact and play with them, travelling between different scenes (environments) to explore, take care of their needs and feeding, and watch them grow up from a baby to adult! You sign an adoption certificate, confirming your responsibilities to properly care for them (just as a real pet!). As more iterations of the game came out, and sequels came along (with the addition of Catz as well), the now Petz series began to really take off around the release of the 3rd version.

Breeding petz for interesting colors and genetic variations became extremely popular, as well as the fun personalities you could get from your pets. Each one is so different! Modded Petz are known as 'Hexed' ones, talented fans have been able to create almost every species under the sun from working with it alongside expanding the list of already existing dogz and catz breeds you could play with. Online communities often centered around this and would often host virtual Best In Breed shows for prizes and winners stamps.

This was a game I dearly loved in my childhood, I've since been able to redownload Petz 4 onto my computer (Without the pets from back then, sadly, but I've been able to recreate a few) since previously unable thanks to windows problems with running a game backwards compatible from approx 2005. Petz 4 is known to be more user friendly, despite me starting with 5. It's a joy to have it back, and I wanted to share the work that wonderful hex creators have made with others that I've found, especially as it often gets pretty tricky to navigate the old web for now, so now onto the good stuff:

Below I've compiled a list of resources for you to browse, some are (relatively) up to date, or at least still functioning, others have to be accessed through the Internet Archive wayback machine. It's great fun to go through these old sites, almost lost to time, and I encourage you to have fun going down the rabbithole of links, buttons to more resources, and all the pages found on these following sites if you have interest!

The resources:

https://homebody.eu/carolyn/carolyn.htm

Carolyn Horn, a famous creator among the community, an extremely talented, elderly female coder who created a lot of hex work for game. The main site hosting Carolyns work is here, and is part of Litterz Factory, one of the best sites a beginner can start with to finding more content and Cliques!

http://quartzforest.gotop100.com/

A resource of popular petz sites from back in the day. Some of these are archived, others not, and a handful are even still functioning to this date!

http://beatnik.tiny-universes.net/

A nice source for Petz resources, with lots of links to relatively recent sites that mostly all seem to still function.

Cargo! A very active and recent creator with stamps and trading cards, they are active even as recently as May of 2023, and can even do Hex pet commissions for you

Filthy Hippie has a ton of Petz stuff available aside from the Petz themself! Exceptionally good place to find loads and loads of new toys, scenes, and decorations for your game and its playrooms

https://cookie-planet.neocities.org/, hosted on the new geocities, with lots of fun stuff to download for the game.

Lucky Penny Kennels was a famous site but shut down, though it's successor site can be found here at https://lukkypenniedal.wixsite.com/justdandypetz

http://www.angelfire.com/moon2/petzzoo2/ , Vickies Petz Zoo, another famous creator of particularly well made petz with a lot of variety and many interesting additional species. Below is another website of Vicky showcasing her 'Show' breeds.

http://www.vickie.simplesuccess.us/

http://www.pineconecattery.com/index.htm

A site ran by Judy. If you browse around between a lot of these resources, you may notice that many of these creators were friendly with and knew eachother, as it was a smaller community back then, even working together on collabs sometimes. You'll often find web buttons and links to eachothers sites.

Kay's Petz has a host of cute gifs, downloadable breeds (including axolotls) and links to other sites. Most interestingly they have worked on experimenting with the processes of the game itself, creating zombie pets, and dogs that can have offspring catz, as well as tips on general gene and other editing guides too found here

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/jade.bailey/home.html

Site run by a young girl, known by Jade Bailey who had a talent for creating petz scenes and others. Though you might be unable to find the creations on her site any more, a lot of other creators (such as Carolyn) have kindly reuploaded and credited them.

http://www.thepetzwarehouse.com/index.shtml

A very early Petz site, pre-2005, you are able to browse through it. As the site was updated, it became discontinued and only provided some other links and resources here http://thepetzwarehouse.com/ 

http://www.cherrymuffin.com/forum/

Though poorly recorded by the wayback archive, this was another forum of tight-knit community members.

A still functioning Petz forum, used for trading, buying/selling Petz https://whiskerwick.boards.net/ , it is also popular for show competitions. 

PUGZ offers similar service but also with the ability of minigames. These forums use earned points for purchases, not real money.

If I find any more particularly good or interesting ones I will continue to update this! Thanks for checking it out!