History Main / APetIntoTheWild

* The children's book ''Dear Hound'' is about a Deerhound puppy named Alfie who gets loose and gets lost in a forest. He survived on scraps of food from garbages and is helped by a pair of foxes until he returns home.

** June and Jim have a budgie named Henry. The one time June lets Henry out his cage, he ends up flying out an open window. No one is able to get him back, so he's left a free bird. Henry then killed by one of the cats a few hours later.

* ''Literature/VarjakPaw'': A kitten named Varjak is forced to leave his pampered home in order to save his family. While Varjak is quite clueless about life outside his home, in many respects he quickly becomes more adept at living as a stray than his peers. While he doesn't know the social in's and out's of being a stray, Varjak is able to unlock the "Way" which allows him to hunt animals. Most of the stray cats in the city can't hunt and instead scavenge off of humans.

** It turns out that White Fang's grandmother had been a village dog that escaped into the wild, mating with a wolf and eventually having Kiche. Kiche herself lived with humans too before going into the wild, where she mates with One-Eye the wolf and gives birth to White Fang. Eventually, the trope is subverted, as Kiche returns to the village with her son.

Occasionally the pets will be born a stray but more commonly they will be a pet who runs off or is abandoned by their owner. Many times these pets-gone-strays will be [[SmalltownBoredom bored of being a pet]] and [[CallToAdventure jump at the excuse to leave]]. Rarely do their owners seem to care for their missing pet and even rarer do they actually retrieve them. The protagonist being a former pet makes them a good AudienceSurrogate as they're uncertain about how living as a stray works and [[NaiveNewcomer must learn]] alongside the viewer.

This is more common with cats than other pets. Dogs and cats are the most popular animals for xenofiction; however, in most developed countries, stray dogs are uncommon. They're either rare or are quickly caught by humans. Stray and feral dogs are seen as more of a hazard, and are more inherently dangerous (large dogs in special, though even if rare rabbies is more common in dogs than cats) than a stray cat is, though stray cats are considered more hazardous to the environment than their canine counterparts, and even feral dogs tend to be more tameable than feral cats. In contrast, stray and feral cats are a common sight even in urban areas.

There's a bit of ValuesDissonance to these types of stories. Many, such as ''Literature/WarriorCats'' and ''Literature/VarjakPaw'', are written by European writers. In the North Americas there is a large "Inside Cat vs Outside Cat" issue, with most animal welfare groups and cat experts citing that cats should exclusively be inside cats and that it's both abusive and bad for the environment if cats are left outside unattended. In the UK, however, the opposite is true. Leaving your cat inside permanently is seen as abusive and cats are meant to be allowed outside. Many adoption agencies won't even adopt out cats if they're intended to be inside cats. Australia is in the middle ground: letting your cats outside is a good thing, as long as it's daylight because your cat will screw the environment if they're outside at night. Feral animals do exist nevertheless, however North Americans are less likely to glamourize it.

If they do somehow make it past their first few weeks without being killed or rescued, they'll likely have less-than-fortunate lives filled with hunger, parasites, and danger. Not even feral animals live long (feral cats have a lifespan around 3-5 years in contrast to pets who live 13-20 [[note]]feral barn cats are an exception, as they tend to be tended by humans even on "feral" status. Feral farm cats in areas with predators or near important roads however have similar lifespans to urban feral cats, if not shorter.[[/note]]), nevermind pets who have to learn survival skills as adults. Alas, watching a dog die of starvation isn't exactly fun so most stories (even darker ones) whitewash the harsher aspects.