I don’t doubt based on the rest of your post that you were dealing with a scammer that day.
But I call legit customer service for legit US banks and legit US retailers and often hear kids and dogs in the background. WFH is real.
Or the dull drone of 40 other people all speaking Hindi-accented English together in some dank warehouse in e.g. Bangalore.
That is the reality of legit customer service in the USA today. So I would not use those features as clues suggesting legit or not legit.
I’ve got all kinds of neat free stuff piling up at Harbor Freight. 
As a set of general rules, nothing anyone sends you in an email should be taken at face value; nothing in an email is ever so urgent that it requires immediate action and emails that claim something bad has happened, and exhort you to click a link or phone a number contained within the email should be treated with high suspicion.
I’m not saying that there are never any genuine emails that look like this, only that, IMO, the best approach is to distrust by default.
I kind of miss the “you have a package in customs,” calls I used to get. I would try to think of something different every time. “Oh no. It isn’t my cocaine is it?” “Oh don’t worry, it’s just a set of human lungs. It hasn’t started to stink has it?” “Package? Don’t you mean packages? What the hell did you do with my shit, man?”
“Where’s my small tactical nuke?”
I got an email about that just recently; I asked them the dimensions then expressed disappointment that there were only three
Yep.
Yep
If you get a issues reported- like a scam or a fraud, always go to the home page, never the links or numbers in the email, or similar message.
These go to my spam folder.
Yes to the 2nd.
I called one support person (maybe Comcast?) with a foreign accent where I could hear a rooster in the background. “Is that a rooster?” “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”
PayPal scams I delete immediately, but I’ve been getting lots of Coinbase scams. I spamified them about five times before they stopped getting through.
Excellent!
Read your email carefully. The message you quoted is not from PayPal. It was a message added by the party who made the transaction, and they are trying to make it look like PayPal to get you to call the number. God only know what scam awaits if you call the number.
Yep.
I worked as a consultant for the Federal Reserve bank, remote from home, and yes, sometimes had to talk with customers and once in a while they might have been able to hear a cat. So, yeah- work from home was a BIG thing during Covid and it is still here to an extent. Hearing a dog bark should not necessarily be a BIG red flag.
I just got an email from Paypal about this-
How to spot email
scams quickly
As digital scams are getting more sophisticated, it’s important to learn how to spot common signs of fraud and report it to stay safe online.
If you receive a communication – a call, text, or email – that you think may not really be from PayPal, don’t respond, share any personal information, click on any links or open any attachments. Simply forward it to Phishing@paypal.com and delete it.… Here are some simple tips to stay safe from scams and phishing:
Be cautious if the email:
Be wary of false urgency.
Scams often create a false sense of urgency. If in doubt, log in to your PayPal account to check for urgent messages or notifications.