So, can I use swears like damn in my pet profiles and still be allowed to win the pet spotlight?

Easy answer: yes.

Yes. I think it gets filtered by the site's filtering system.

I'm pretty sure you can, they just get filtered. One of my pets has a swear word in his story, not that I've won and I don't think he'd be spotlight eligible anyway, but instead of the word coming up as what's typed, it comes up filtered if you have it on and says butthead.

yes, unless it's in an image and thus unable to be filtered

Thank you, that's what I thought, but I wanted to confirm before I wrote any swears in. :)