Can anyone help me on how to get rare pets?

[ThatOneNerdo]

My sister, ZiggyKitten97 just gave me some pets as I have now just started playing CS, but I don't know how to get rare pets! Someone help?

[Shinryu]

There are a number of ways you may be able to obtain rares^^
First, of course, there's your own monthly adopts. Pets can grow into different outcomes, some of which are more or less common than others. It doesn't happen very often, but every once in a while there are outcomes that already start out as rares, and if you're lucky, you will get one from your own growths. (This is why many people don't like trading their pets before they can see what rarity tag they get.)

An easier way to get rares from pets that you adopt yourself is to participate in our various events. There are three so-called 'token hunt' events on CS each year - Easter, Summer, and Halloween. During these events, users have to look for banners that are hidden at the bottom of random pages, and click them to receive special items known as tokens.
Those token items can be exchanged on the event page for prize pets or items.
Token-traded pets' rarities almost always range from uncommon to rare (though we even had a very rare outcome once!), so doing your best in the events and getting as many token pets as possible can be a huge boost to your trade fodder.

Speaking of events - it may be a bit of a tease to mention, since there's still three months to go, but you'll want to get online on December 18th to adopt from our Advent Calendar. You can find more info here, but to put it short: the pets you adopt from the advent gift on this day are guaranteed to be at least rare!

You might also get lucky by grabbing rare pets from the Pound when it opens. For this, your timing is important. The Pound works on a first-come-first-serve basis. the first person to click a pet will get it, so the rarest and most popular pets tend to be taken very quickly once the Pound opens.
Make sure to keep an eye on the Pound page throughout the day, so you will see if the timer gets set. The more time has passed since the initial opening, the fewer valuable pets will be available.
If you don't know how to tell if a pet is rare, you can try checking this group before the Pound opens. It contains all pets that will be available in the next opening (or that still are in the current one), so if you look at it beforehand, you can perhaps memorize a couple of pets to keep an eye out for.
There's always a big amount of luck involved with getting valuable pets from the Pound, so try not to be discouraged if you can't seem to find rares - at the end of the day, you still get a free pet, and you can always try to snag older pets or anything else you may be interested in.

Yet another chance to get rare pets is by visiting the Free Adoptions board. It's a place for people to advertise things they give away for free, so if you are a new player, it is one of the best places to be! You can probably find many pets you need by looking through users' adoption centers - it's a great way to start off your collection.
For valuable pets, the things you'll want to look out for the most are threads by quitting users, and giveaways.
When people quit the game, they might decide to give all their stuff to other players, so when you see someone post a thread saying so, don't hesitate to look at it, especially if it seems to be new and doesn't have many replies on it yet.
People who give away their collections might have rare pets, and you might be lucky enough to ask for a pet before anyone else does.
There are also always a number of people holding giveaways, often with rare or otherwise valuable prizes. Feel free to check them out and try entering if you can - there's nothing wrong with taking a shot at winning a free rare, after all :)

Another way to get extra pets could be by doing stuff like opening an art shop. This certainly isn't an option for everyone, but many people are willing to offer pets for art, writing, help with creating pretty signatures, or a variety of other things. Check out the art shops boards if you're interested^^

Then, of course, there's trading. If you don't have a lot of pets to offer yet, it may not be easy to get rares from other players, as few people are willing to give them out cheaply. But if you keep accumulating more and more pets, you may eventually have enough to trade them for other, rarer pets. There's a lot of advice out there for trading, so if you'd like, feel free to check out some of the trading guides listed here.

Lastly, it's worth noting that pets' rarities fluctuate and change over time. As pets get older, and people start or stop playing, pets will enter and leave circulation. Pets tend to increase in rarity as they get older - if you take a look at the archives, you will notice that the vast majority of pets from years like 2008 and 2009 are rare or more. Many of them started out just as common as pets from the last few months. The rarities of our pets get updated roughly every 1-3 months.

Good luck!