The Tramp: from street-smart hobo to family dog in the span of 75 minutes!
A person finds a dog or cat on its own and decides to keep it. Occasionally the animal will be someone else's who got loose, however usually they're a stray.
This trope is Truth in Television, though for fairly obvious reasons, going to your local shelter to adopt a pet is the easiest and safest way of doing this. While there are plenty of success stories of people encountering stray animals and adopting them right then and there, it is not advised to interact with stray (and especially feral) animals without proper knowledge on how to do so, due to the risk of them having diseases or because they might harm you. The latter applies far more to dogs than to cats and domestic birds (such as pigeons). Dogs are more inherently and realistically dangerous and capable of killing a human, whereas the other two- the more avoidant of conflict and relatively harmless cats and the although unwary of humans and disease-carrying in high concentrations but mostly harmless pigeons, aren't.
Pets Versus Strays is not always but is very often involved in such stories.
Compare to Rags to Riches and Recruited from the Gutter for humans. The inversion is A Pet into the Wild. May be done via Abandoned Pet in a Box. Related to Unsuccessful Pet Adoption.
Examples:
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Animation
- The finale of A Kitten Named Woof ends with both Woof and his best friend the puppy being adopted by two children in the city. In prior episodes, the house they live in seems occupied but we hardly see the owners, and the final episode hints that they left, abandoning the animals living there in the process.
Anime & Manga
- At the start of 365 Days to the Wedding, Takuya, one of the two leads, has just adopted a stray cat named Kama, and is just starting to get Kama to trust him. Unfortunately, his company is planning to someone to a remote location, meaning he would have to give up Kama if he got stuck with the assignment. As a result, he considers quitting until his coworker Rika proposed pretending to get married.
- Chi from Chi's Sweet Home is a stray kitten adopted by a family. In the manga, it's subverted in that her cat family had owners to begin with, and they've been looking for their lost kitten for a while.
- Nuko Duke begins with Kei and Sasame starting their new lives in this way.
- My Roommate is a Cat explores some of the consequences of this, though both cat (Haru) and owner (Subaru) are lucky enough that the worse possible ones didn't actually happen:
- One of the potential problems with Subaru not taking Haru to the vet immediately was that she could be sick from living on the streets, which fortunately turned out to not be the case.
- Because Haru is used to food being scarce and eating what she can find immediately, Subaru ends up accidentally overfeeding her because he just fills her bowl whenever it's empty.
- The hyper-vigilance Haru acquired while on the streets results in her being a little hostile towards the more smothering displays of affection coming from humans, notably the youngest siblings of Subaru's childhood friend and Subaru's Manchild editor who loves cats but married a woman who's allergic to them.
- One of Haru's siblings also ends up becoming this and is named Hachi by his new owners.
- Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon: The more pet-like Pokemon can come off as adopted pets, but almost none as strongly as Litten. It was rather fierce toward Ash (and pretty much everyone but Moani the fruit stand owner), not wanting to leave its surrogate Stoutland parent. Once the elderly dog died and the kitten had a day to work through its grief, it accepted Ash's offer to be "adopted" into his team.
- Josee, The Tiger, and The Fish: The stray black cat that often wanders into Josee's house for food is named Yukichi by Tsuneo and stays in Josee's house.
Comic Books
- Asterix: Obelix's beloved Canine Companion Dogmatix was once a stray on the streets of Lutetia (modern-day Paris), until the events of Asterix and the Banquet, when he spotted Asterix and Obelix coming out of a butcher shop, and followed them throughout the rest of the adventure as a Funny Background Event. Obelix didn't even notice him until the ending feast, when Dogmatix barked for the first time, and happily fed him. By the next album, Obelix had officially adopted him as a pet, and Dogmatix has been part of their adventures ever since.
- My Boyfriend is a Bear: Bear returns from hibernation and goes back to his girlfriend Nora with flowers and a stray kitten he found in a dumpster while looking for clothes.
- Superman story "The Super-Dog from Krypton!": Teen Clark Kent happens upon a super-powered stray dog which is spreading chaos across Smallville. Upon learning that strange god is his actual dog, Clark decides to adopt him.
- Supergirl:
- Kara is prone to adopt stray cats. In "Supergirl's Super Pet", Kara finds a stray tabby cat and begs her orphanage's headmistress let her take him in, naming the cat "Streaky" because of the lightning bolt-like yellow streaks on his sides. Unbeknownst to her, Streaky had been given powers because of a bizarre Kryptonite-related accident, and would become her Action Pet for several years.
- Supergirl (1982): Several years later, Kara finds another stray kitten scrounging around her apartment and declares he is not homeless anymore, naming him "Streaky" after her first cat.
- In Supergirl (2005), Kara adopts a stray cat which she finds roaming and looking for food around her flat.
Comic Strips
- In Little Orphan Annie, Annie finds a stray dog who won't leave her alone. She takes him in and names him "Sandy" to avoid him being sent to the pound.
- Mutts: Guard Dog becomes a stray after being abandoned by his owner. This leads to him being unchained and taken to the shelter/clinic hybrid, where Doozy and her family adopt him and rename him "Sparky".
Fan Works
- The Bolt Chronicles: Zig-zagged consistently.
- Mittens in "The Survivor," who goes from stray to pet to stray to pet.
- Blaze in "The Seven" and "The Cameo," who goes back and forth from stray to pet several times, ending up as a stray.
- Mary in "The Wind" goes from stray to pet and back to stray.
- Danganronpa Gaiden Series: In "Kiki's Dog!
", Kiki found a malnourished red sesame shiba that she secretly takes care of. After Kyoko caught her, she was given a one-month trial period to prove that she could take care of the dog, though the trial was ended preemptively after the dog (later named Hogo) saved Kiki from being killed by Korekiyo.
- In the RWBY oneshot Humble Beginnings, Taiyang found Zwei as a puppy on the streets and took him in.
- ✨A Sadness Runs Through Him ✨ COMPLETE Snowtuft Warriors AU Map: Snowkit was taken in by Princess and raised as a pet for several months. It was only temporary as he eventually left to become a rogue when Brackenfur reunited with him.
Films — Animation
- At the end of All Dogs Go to Heaven 2, Charlie and Sasha are adopted by David. Charlie is given a new chance at life and allowed to live on Earth for twenty more years.
- Thomas O'Malley from The Aristocats is a stray cat who helps a pedigree pet cat and her kittens get back home. In the end, he ends up being taken in as well.
- Subverted in Balto. Despite saving the children and siring puppies with Jenna, Balto is still a street dog in the sequel Balto II: Wolf Quest. The historical Balto was also not an example, but for a different reason—he was bred as a championship sled dog.
- The conclusion of Bolt has the dog Bolt reunited with his owner Penny, but includes his entourage as well: a hamster named Rhino who left a trailer park to answer the Call to Adventure, and a cat named Mittens, who, during an Accidental Public Confession, recounts "They pack up all their stuff, and all their love, and leave their declawed cat behind to fend for herself." The whole trio get adopted into Penny's new country home.
- Lady and the Tramp:
- The first film ends with the Tramp being adopted into his mate Lady's family and the two having puppies together.
- At the end of Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure, Angel is taken in by Scamp's family much like Tramp was several months prior.
- The titular character of Oliver & Company was a stray kitten until Jenny found him.
- Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron: Spirit was born a feral mustang but gets taken in by humans. He refuses to be tamed, but eventually befriends a human. He is ultimately set free at the end of the film.
- In Three From Prostokvashino, Fyodor meets the (talking) stray cat Matroskin (it's somewhat of a family name) and wants to take him in as a pet. Similarly, Sharik the dog is supposed to be a stray initially. However, by the time all three live in Prostokvashino, they are treated as equals rather than pets.
Films — Live-Action
- Firehouse Dog: Rexxx is a canine actor who gets lost in a smaller town, wandering the town of South Harbor as a stray until he is rescued from a burning building by the town's fire chief. They originally take him in until they can find his owner, but end up keeping him as a pet.
- Goodbye My Lady is about a fourteen-year-old boy who finds a stray Basenji and keeps her as his hunting dog.
- In Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, the pets become lost in San Francisco, where they meet a gang of stray dogs. One of them, Delilah, and Chance fall in love, but Shadow ultimately talks her into breaking up with him as the goofy Chance cannot survive in the city. However, it turns out happily as, at the end of the movie, Delilah turns up at the Seavers' house, having followed Chance, and the family decides to let her stay.
- 1930s short film Wanted—A Master is about a dog who has to find a master on short notice, as the authorities are going to be rounding up stray dogs and putting them to sleep that afternoon.
Literature
- Kit Kittredge from the American Girl series adopts a stray Basset Hound in Happy Birthday, Kit!, whom she ironically named Grace for her clumsiness. This sub-plot was also used in the Live-Action Adaptation of Kit's book series.
- Because of Winn-Dixie is about a girl named Opal who adopts a stray dog she finds at a Winn-Dixie supermarket. She names him after the supermarket in the spur of the moment.
- The Cat in the Stacks Mysteries:
- Diesel himself, found shivering in the rain as an eight-to-ten-weeks-old kitten. Charlie rescues him, takes him to a vet to be checked out, and adopts him.
- In Ladies #1, while Dickce and Benjy Stephens are on their way to town to get groceries, they find a labradoodle by the side of the road, and an Abyssinian that comes running to join him. Later in the afternoon, after taking the animals to the vet's office to be checked out, Dickce meets the owner — a local farmer, who explains the two (named Peanut and Endora, respectively) were his mother's, but he was taking them to a shelter after she died (since he couldn't give them the attention they needed) and they escaped from his truck en route. Having already come to care for the two, Dickce immediately makes arrangements with Claud to adopt them.
- During Chocolat, Guillaume loses his beloved dog Charly to disease and is so heartbroken he swears he'll never get another pet...until the Bittersweet Ending, where his friends notice a stray puppy hanging around him. He feeds it but insists that it's not his pet. Vianne just smiles.
- Subverted in the Discworld novel Men at Arms. Due to his assistance in the case, amongst the Watch's requested rewards is a lovely home for Gaspode the Wonder Dog. The next time we see him he's shooting down the street shedding soapy water while complaining that his flea collection is ruined.
- Used repeatedly in A Dog's Life:
- Squirrel and her brother Bone are caught by a couple as puppies. The people however took them on a whim and weren't ready for one un-trained puppy, nevermind two. They end up abandoning them at a mall. Squirrel ends up with a permanent shoulder injury from being thrown out of the car.
- Bone ends up taken in by two women who see him get thrown out of the car. Squirrel ends up left behind because they don't want two dogs and don't think she's as cute as Bone. Squirrel tries throughout her life to locate Bone but she never does.
- After Squirrel's friend Moon gets hit by a car and dies, Squirrel is adopted by a family. They however don't keep dogs permanently. They keep dogs while at their summer home then abandon them when they leave. Squirrel, now named "Daisy", is made to sleep in the garage and isn't allowed indoors. For the first few days, she's played with however eventually her owners start ignoring her. Eventually they forget to feed her, causing her to start hunting again. By the end of the summer, they go home without Squirrel.
- One winter, a now-elderly Squirrel takes refuge in a shed. She is found by an eighty-year-old woman named Susan who gives her food. Squirrel is reluctant to take it at first but eventually gives in. She ends up coming inside with the women, gets renamed "Addie", and the book ends with her living with her new owner.
- In the first of The Famous Five books, George reveals that she found Timmy on the moors when he was a puppy, and she made a pet of him.
- Millions of Cats: An elderly couple want to adopt a cat, so the husband travels far away and finds "hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats" hanging out on a hill, with no people around to take care of them. Deciding to bring home the prettiest, he chooses one, then another, until he's brought them all home... much to the shock of his wife, who points out that they can’t possibly feed them all.
- Beverly Cleary's book Ribsy recounts how Henry Huggins's dog Ribsy got out of the family car at a shopping center and ended up with another family with five daughters. The girls tried to bathe Ribsy and made him reek of violet-scented soap. Ribsy escaped their clutches and wandered the town until finding a boy with a ball, who snuck Ribsy into his apartment building to feed him. The boy's irritable mother forbids the dog, and Ribsy is left stray again. It's an Earn Your Happy Ending story.
- In the book Santa Paws, the titular character gets his happy ending when a loving family adopts him.
- Tailchaser's Song: Played with Tailchaser. He was saved from death by humans. He sleeps in a bed on their porch and eats from their food, however he doesn't actually seem to be their pet. He's still a feral cat instead of an outside cat.
- Underground: Tiny, a small black kitten roaming around Robyn's apartment complex, is taken in by her due to the increasingly harsh weather and eventually becomes her pet.
- Warrior Cats:
- Violet was born in BloodClan, but when she was badly injured by her brothers, Barley took her to live with Fuzz, whose owner was a veterinarian.
- Pinestar, a leader of ThunderClan, left the Clan to live out the rest of his final life as a kittypet.
- A few of the last remaining members of Old SkyClan became kittypets when the Clan finally split up.
- In Dawn of the Clans, after Turtle Tail realizes her feelings for Gray Wing are unrequited, she joins her friend Bumble as a kittypet. She later goes back to the forest, however.
- It's mentioned that RiverClan cats are so pretty that humans often "steal" them to keep as pets.
- Played for tragedy in Hawkwing's Journey: the reborn SkyClan suffers such a Trauma Conga Line throughout the book that some Clan cats reach the Despair Event Horizon and wander off to the human town near the gorge to be adopted as kittypets.
- Subverted at the start of Where the Red Fern Grows. The protagonist finds a hound dog being attacked by other strays and saves him. He gives him some food, washes him, and gives him a place to sleep for the night, but lets him go the next day. He assumes since the dog had a collar and his paw looked like he had been walking for a long time, he was trying to find his way home.
- In White Fang, White Fang is born in the wild to a wolf-dog that had run away and mated with a wolf. He's later adopted by his mother's owner, though he doesn't really become a "pet" until the end of the book when he finally knows the love of a kind master.
- In Wish, Charlie becomes interested in a stray dog she names Wishbone. She and Howard set a trap for him in Charlie's garage baited with meat. After he's captured, he adjusts to life as Charlie's pet surprisingly quickly.
Live-Action TV
- On Adam Ruins Everything, at the end of the "Animals" episode, Veronica adopts a stray cat that had been living under her porch, that she called Mr. Bitey. (Mr. Bitey was actually female, and had already borne several litters of kittens, and Veronica had her spayed per Adam's recommendations.)
Roleplay
- Kwang from Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues was a stray squirrel before Hyeon ran over his mother and then adopted him out of guilt. He now lives in Hyeon's house with him and travels around in his backpack.
Video Games
- Cyberpunk 2077: V can adopt a stray sphinx cat that lives near their apartment.
- Every Fallout game (except for Fallout: New Vegas) has a stray dog named "Dogmeat" as a possible companion.
- Diamond Dog from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain starts as a stray puppy lost in the wilderness. You can send him back to Mother Base and have Ocelot train him as an Attack Animal.
- Your pet in Stardew Valley is a stray found by Marnie. She'll ask if you want to adopt them.
- Story of Seasons:
- Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life begins with the protagonist going from the city to their recently-deceased father's farm. When you arrive you end up finding two puppies: a Beagle looking dog (the classic Story of Seasons dog) and a Shiba Inu. Takakura only lets you keep one but says he will find the other a home in the city. Unlike in some other games in the series, the dog is for aesthetic value and doesn't help with the farm animals, although Beta screenshots showed them herding.
- Harvest Moon: Save The Homeland has similar Beagle- and Shiba-like dogs roaming around on your farm randomly. You can place food in the dog bowl to befriend them, but once you take one in the other will stop appearing.
- In Harvest Moon: Animal Parade there are numerous animals, both domestic and wild, that you can keep as pets if you befriend them.
- In the Shinjuku Singularity of Fate/Grand Order, Saber Alter encounters a stray dog that follows her around and stays even as she tells him to go away. Despite her insistence that he's not her pet, she pampers him like one, trains him and names him Cavall II. She's also outraged when Chaldea decides to use him as bait to trap Hessian Lobo. At the singularity's end, she hopes that he finds someone worthy of his loyalty as he whines his goodbyes.
- Gotham Knights (2022) has a stray cat manage to get past all of the security of the Belfry (the Knights' secret lair), with the Knights deciding to keep him, buying cat food and (eventually, though the subtitles name him that even beforehand) naming him Cisco.
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero:
- There's a kitten (according to Tio, who Speaks Fluent Animal, is named Coppe) squatting on the roof of the abandoned building that becomes the home and headquarters of the Special Support Section. While the heroes don't officially adopt Coppe, they don't shoo it away either, and feeding it a different fish once per chapter in both games would have Coppe give some useful Quartz in exchange.
- An optional quest early on is about two kids finding a different stray, and the heroes go around Crossbell asking other kids if the cat belonged to them. It was eventually revealed that Lonely Rich Kid Sunika was the owner, but she was hiding the fact from her parents. Fortunately, Sunika's father allowed her to keep the kitten.
- Life Is Strange: True Colors: Steph’s cat, Valkyrie, was a stray living in the walls of the Rocky Mountain Record Traders, where Steph works, before Steph coaxed her out. After checking that she wasn’t somebody’s lost pet, Steph adopted her.
Visual Novels
- Paper Perjury: Although Toasty used to be a feral cat, the Eubanks domesticated him to the point where he has no problem being constantly cuddled or exploring every corner of their house. Granted, he was already the sort of cat that goes up to people and charms them into donating food.
Web Animation
- Subverted in The Legend of Luo Xiao Hei. Luo Xiaobai initially discovers Xiao Hei in cat form in an alley, and taking pity on him, brings him to her house to keep as a pet. In reality, Xiao Hei was on a mission and had simply taken shelter in that alley, and was in cat form because he was stuck while his body recuperated. At least he wasn't ungrateful to Xiaobai.
Webcomics
- But I'm a Cat Person begins when Sparrow's roommate picks up a stray puppy, despite the fact she doesn't care for dogs. As it turns out the dog is really a "Being", a shapeshifting Mon-type species who constantly fight for unknown reasons and can be owned by humans. They have both an animal form and a humanoid form. The puppy goes by "Patrick" in his human form, "Spot" in his dog form.
- Dean & Nala + Vinny: Dean and Nala's backstory. He heard a meow and found an abandoned kitten. After feeding, he rode away but turned around shortly after. Ever since, they have been together. Vinny the roach joins them much later.
- Stand Still, Stay Silent: The Team Pet is a kitten born in the Forbidden Zone that the main characters are exploring, which has been devoid of humans for ninety years. By this point, only individuals that are The Immune to The Plague would still be around, cats are all immune, the crew badly needs an Evil-Detecting Cat for their mission and they didn't start out with one due to Cutting Corners.
Web Videos
- Nana from Kittisaurus had to have ended up at an animal shelter somehow, and had Claire not taken in her and her kittens, all three would have been euthanized. Once Nana has been introduced to the other cats and they get used to each other, she makes it her mission to befriend all of them.
Western Animation
- Brian Griffin from Family Guy was a stray talking dog found by Peter and he adopted him into their family.
- The Disney short Feast begins with James finding the main character Winston as a puppy on the streets.
- On Rocko's Modern Life, Bev adopts a Pit Bull named Earl, who Escaped from the Lab.
- Spirit: Riding Free: The title character is the son of the original Spirit. First he was a wild herd leader; then he met the main character and made friends with her, and now he's basically her pet. (Although she does have his barn stall set up so he can leave whenever he wants.)
- In the Steven Universe episode "Pool Hopping," Garnet and Steven find seemingly abandoned feral kittens and save them. They give them to an animal shelter, though they adopt the one-eyed kitten and name her Cat Steven.
Real Life
- Although cats are considered less-domesticated than other pets, and thus have a better chance at long-term survival in the wild, their instinct to utilise human infrastructure to their advantage (mainly for food and shelter) means that they'll often stay near human settlements, and individuals used to humans being present may be bold enough to walk right up to someone and allow themselves to be taken home. This scenario is often referred to as the 'Cat Distribution System' online, or described as if the cat is adopting the person who found them, and not the other way around.
- In certain areas, it isn't uncommon for individual animals or whole litters to be abandoned. Since they are used to people, they may follow a kind stranger home and end up as this.
- Also the story of many animals in shelters who were found as strays.
