I second chinchillas. My SO’s best friend had a pair that would greet her when she got home by bounding up and jumping onto her shoulders. She said they were easier to take care of than a rabbit, and were very affectionate. Anecdotal evidence I know, but I’m more a dog/cat person.
My best friend in high school had a pair of de-musked ferrets that were a blast, were toilet trained, and scared the crap out of us during movie nights because they would scuttle along the walls inevitably during the scary scenes. Sharp little teeth, though.
Red-eared sliders can be fun pets for the right owners, but are on the top 100 list of the most damaging invasive species. They’re very commonly sold as pets, so are also very commonly dumped, and outcompete native turtle species.
OP, can you explain more why a parrot doesn’t work for you now? If you worked with a rescue, I bet you could find an individual bird that suits your parameters. Conures do tend to be pretty noisy, but other species like the rose-ringed parakeet (not a budgerigar), Senegal parrot or even Eclectus might be a good fit. They’re gorgeous, great company, long-lived, interactive, trainable…
Rose ringed parakeet females can shriek quite a lot. The males are quieter but sometimes have an eerie whistle or squeal. They aren’t as openly affectionate as cockatiels but do show fondness for their owners (just on their own terms). However, one needs to consider that they can live into their 30’s.
I have. They’re generally terrible pets - they don’t generally seek out human contact, have (and need) super-sharp claws, don’t sit still, pee all over you, are extremely nocturnal (so are asleep during the times you’d like to interact with them, and crazy active while you’re trying to sleep, which can include vocalizing - they woof like tiny dogs). They are also pretty smelly, and need to be quite carefully supervised, as they’ll crawl into hidey-holes and fall asleep.
With cats it all depends. Get one that has no claws and you won’t get very many dead animals other than mice that are too slow to get away and die by being played with. Feed them the right food and the shit doesn’t stink too bad, feed them the wrong food and watch out!. Also, there is litter to consider and shedding. A declawed ragdoll that eats dry food and uses clumping litter might fit the bill. I’ve heard they don’t shed much.
Tin of Salmon. Suits almost all your criteria. Maybe not great with the human interaction, but will sit on your lap for exactly as long as you want it to.
My niece had a chinchilla which lived to be about 14 - it was a gorgeous little thing, very friendly and inquisitive, she had a cage and a sand bath for her, but mostly just let her run round her flat. The only trouble she ever got into was falling down the lavatory once [chinchilla, not niece]. As an aside, I admire you for putting so much thought into the best pet for you - it’s a long relationship!
Open toilets are an infamous hazard to chinchillas. They have a natural behavior to hop up onto rocks and things (for better vantage points to see predators) and they do not swim worth a damn (desert animals). Worse yet, their fur (the finest in the world) keeps water next to their skin – if they get soaked, they can get serious fungal infections.
We had a chinchilla for many years, whom we adopted from someone who kept him mostly caged. He was not as human-interactive as some described in this thread, probably because he was poorly socialized, but he liked to hop onto us. We made a fully-fenced and covered play area outside his cage which he could reach through a tunnel at any time, so he wasn’t quite so cage-bound.
I popped in to say “guinea pig” then I saw you mentioned having owned them in the past.
If yours were outdoor pets, then an indoor one would be quite different. As others have said, they respond to your voice and other sounds that mean yummy things may be coming (ours learned to recognize plastic bags rattling as this often meant they were getting their fresh veggies).
The last few we’ve had have not loved being handled but if we cornered them and caught them in the cage, they were pretty tolerant of handling.
They don’t climb - so if you don’t have any other pets that might be dangerous (cats, dogs, eagles) you can have them in an open top enclosure.
One of ours DID attempt suicide after a fashion: I was holding him trying to get him to be more used to be handled; I answered the door - and he spooked, big time. The poor fellow who was at the door was treated to a black and white blur going sideways, and a homeowner shrieking and taking off back into the house. I finally caught the pig (he’d run around most of the ground floor) and dealt with the fellow, then rushed the pig to the vet. He’d broken both his front teeth and had some fluid in his lungs but with treatment (antibiotics, a diuretic, something for pain, and mushy food hand-fed to him for a few days) he was ultimately fine.
I know nothing about rabbits or other small animals as pets aside from hamsters. I had them growing up, and I don’t recommend them: they don’t like people, and they try to escape at every opportunity. The one we got for my son managed to get out several times; we never found her the last time.
