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[Ganthan]

Ok, I'm getting confused about the whole 'Catsplosion' thing because the wiki distinctly says in the Meat Industry article that any given animal species is capped at around 50 after which females will no longer get pregnant, yet I keep reading about fortresses that supposedly grind to a halt with FPS due to "hundreds and hundreds" of pet cats.  So, what's the truth here?  Do pets not count towards animal population cap or do 50+ cats really eat up that much FPS?

I haven't gotten far enough in the game to see a catsplosion but I'd like to know the truth so I can nip it in the bud early.

[smjjames]

I guess it just seems like hundreds and hundreds. While the population for any one species is capped at 50 (for births anyway, yoiu can still get wild versions and those that traders bring), it's still possible to have hundreds of animals in a fort, especially if you make all or most animals tameable.

The real problem with a catsplosion is that if every cat you have gets adopted, you can't butcher them, so you'll have to get creative.

[Leesin]

I already started ordering cats to get butchered, just do it ASAP, well whenever you think the number of cats is too much, when they have kittens just butcher the little bastards before they adopt an owner.

[Hitori]

One method of animal control I implemented a while back was installing an atom smasher in one of the main hallways with doors at each end. I'd just wait for a dwarf to wander through trailing a pet, or just an animal wandering alone, then lock the doors, pull a lever, and squish. There's probably easier ways though.

[Collic]

I've never suffered from a catsplosion myself but I've heard the stories so Ive always kept my cat population in check. butchering the kittens as soon as they arrive, or if I'm not confident my butcher will get to them quickly, caging them to stop them from adopting an owner until I can deal with them.

Could be many of the stories are from a time before the pop cap, assuming that applies to cats (I can't see why it wouldn't though), but I can imagine having even just fifty of them could cause problems. If  they've adopted dwarves you can't easily dispose of them, and their path finding must be more costly than other animals. They hunt down vermin, and then take the corpses to their owners, or to a refuse stockpile. Which is handy (and very cool), but all of that must take it's toll when you have fifty of the little buggers running around...

heh, I'm sure someone who isn't new will chime in with a horror story soon enough.

[NecroRebel]

The 50-animal cap is a soft cap; you actually will get ~70-75 animals of a given species due to pregnancies that happen before you get to 50 if you slaughter roughly-even numbers of males and females.

Now, you might think that 70 is nothing compared to hundreds, but in the units list and z-animals menu, that'll certainly seem like hundreds. It's several pages worth of nothing but cats, after all, which takes time to go through.

The FPS hit from catsplosions is made far worse in forts that have acessability problems in the first place. Every time a creature encounters another creature when it is pathing someplace, both repath. Make 3-, or even 5-, width hallways, and you're going to have collisions. More creatures overall pathing through an area overall, though, doesn't increase FPS drop linearally; the chance of a creature encountering another is increased with every critter you add, and each time an encounter happens a certain FPS drop occurs. Cats are worse than most creatures, since they actually wander everywhere and don't nicely stay in the meeting area, so every 3 cats is probably about as bad for your FPS as 2 dwarves. 50+ cats is probably about a 4x multiplier to the number of paths the processor must find compared to 0 cats, and since pathfinding is the greatest FPS drop in the first place, well... Trouble.

[BradB]

The kitten birth announcement triggers a reflex in which I immediately stuff the fwuffy kitties into a cage. Often I have a few score animals in that single wooden cage I place at the start of every fort.

[Ilmoran]

Given that cats pregnant before the cap will still give birth, and cats have litters, I imagine you could (especially if you're determined to max out your cats) get around 130 cats.  It depends on how many female you have compared to males, and how many of them are pregnant when the last birth takes place.  If you wanted to maximize your cats (why?!?), get them to 50, wait a year to make sure all pregnancies are done, then butcher/kill all males except 1, and if you need to, enough females to get below 49 total.  With luck, your male will release sporeclouds all year, and get every female pregnant before the first gives birth.

That said, I was thinking about a modding solution to catsplosions, and I think I came up with something good this morning.
Cat adoption behavior is based on the [VERMINHUNTER] tag.  So, move that tag from it's standard place in the cats raw, to the [CASTE:MALE] section.  This way, your male cats will adopt dwarves and hunt vermin, but you can butcher or cage female (being able to cage females means you can have them give birth in cages, so you won't even need to tell dwarves to drag the fluffballs to the cages).

[Safe-Keeper]

Over time, you will get into a routine where you head over into the animals menu and mark kittens for butchery whenever you get the "... has given birth to kittens" message.

Just make sure there are enough left to catch vermin .

[Jumpp]

I just use a few cages to control the animal population.  Any time an animal gives birth, I just pop over to my cage and add the new animal.  It's easy because the newest thing is always at the very bottom of the list.