Lazy initialization for stack objects?

Question

I know we can do the following with heap objects:

/* Heap objects */
Pet *pet;

if (...)
    pet = new Pet("Dog");
else
    pet = new Pet("Cat");    

But how do we do it if we wanted the Pet object to be declared on the stack?

/* Stack objects */
Pet pet;

if (...)
    -?-
else
    -?-

Answer 1

Try the following

Pet pet(theCondition ? "Dog" : "Cat");

Or if the conditional blocks are more complex than a single initialization store the const char* which is used for initialization as a separate local

const char* pArgument;
if (...) {
  ...
  pArgument = "Dog";
} else {
  ...
  pArgument = "Cat";
}

Pet pet(pArgument);