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[Train Poacher]

First time poster here. I've been playing Dwarf Fortress off and on for about a month now, and I've only just established a fort that's holding its own against the rest of the harsh world.

However, I'm having a little more fun with my pets than I'd like. The front entrance to my fort is a long, 3 tile wide corridor lined with traps. Every time I have a siege, my pets all flock to the door in a single-file line. Of course, they get murdered, and all my dwarfs get unhappy thoughts. Can anyone explain what's going on, or give me any suggestions to prevent this from continuing in the future?

Currently, I have a large pit that I just throw all my stray animals into, but I can't do that with the animals that have owners.

[Acero]

I'm sorry, I cannot tell you why the pets would do that,  but to stop them you could consider putting a draw bridge in and closing it when your fort is attacked.

[Torgan]

That sounds odd.  A couple of ideas would be that any war animals trained in the kennels will follow the trainer until they are assigned to a dwarf so if your trainer is wandering around there that might explain it.  Most animals will hang around your meeting areas nearly all teh time, do you have one designated?  I usually just make my dining hall a meeting area, 'q' a constructed table then it's one of the options there.

Or you could build a cage, b->j, and assign any loose animals there.  Improves your fps but it stops them breeding.  I don't think you can assign pets though.

[FleshForge]

The thing is, your cats smell delicious fuzzy wamblers and such through the walls of your fort.  While I'm sure there are vermin inside your walls, some cats get bored of these easy prey and dream of chasing those particular unkilled vermin outside, so the second you open your gate they're all OMG IT'S SPRINGTIME and they rush outside the gate to kill the sources of those tantalizing smells.  If you have "gather refuse outside" turned on, your industrious dwarves will rush outside to pick up the dead fuzzy wamblers too.  Essentially, this is happening because cats are irritating and stupid.

You may think I'm joking but I'm not, this is what they do.  If there is fighting that goes on outside your perimeter, chances are corpses will be left by that combat, and corpses attract vermin, and vermin attracts cats.  If the vermin are far enough away in terms of steps needed to reach them, then the cats may decide it's too much trouble, but this distance is hard to define more accurately than "far as fuck".

[Pagan]

I cage all my animals, regardless of what they are. Cant stand things wandering around my fort and getting in the way.

[FleshForge]

Yeah the problem is, after they have bonded you can't cage them or put them on a rope.

I suppose a way to alleviate the bonded cat wildness would be to put things that amuse them in places very far from your gate, e.g. my refuse pile tends to be on -20z and "far as fuck" from the main entry.  You could also build one or more ropes/chains and make them into free rooms, which causes idle animals to congregate around the restraint (and a few idle dwarves too).

[Pagan]

Thats the exact reason why I cage everything as soon as I notice them.

I've heard though that if a cat adopts a dwarf you can cage it in his room for happy thoughts, havent tried it yet though, but the theory sounds sound to me.

[Sphalerite]

In my fortresses I almost inevitably end up building a cat isolator within a first few years.  The cat isolator is a single tile wide hallway with a lever at the end, and a door, hatch, and another door leading up to it.  The hatch is over a hole in a floor, and has the doors before and after it, and is linked to another lever somewhere else in the fortress.  When an immigrant shows up with a cat, I remove all labors on that dwarf.  I set the lever so only he can pull it, and then set it to be pulled on repeat.  The last door just after the hatch I set to forbid pets.  The cat-owning dwarf goes to pull the lever, and eventually the cat decides to bring him a dead vermin, but gets stopped by the pet-forbidden door, standing atop the floor hatch.  I then lock both doors and have another dwarf pull the lever controlling the floor hatch.

What is under the floor hatch depends on how lenient I'm feeling.  It can be just a single-tile hole in the ground, which the cat will fall into and then never leave.  The cat's owner won't get upset because the cat isn't dead, but the cat can't get outside or kill important vermin.  Sometimes I'll dump the cat in the caverns to explore them without putting any dwarves at risk.  Or I can just put a spike trap or something in the cat dump hole instead.

[FleshForge]

Re: a cage in the pet owner's room, that sounded like a good idea, but unfortunately I just tried that (one of my squad captains happens to have a cat bonded) and it doesn't work.

[Sphalerite]

You can't cage or chain pets, only stray tame animals.  Dwarves will get good thoughts from seeing an animal they like in a cage, regardless of if it's in their room or not, but it has to be a stray animal and not a pet in order to cage it.

[mrbobbyg]

Essentially, this is happening because cats are irritating and stupid.

Awesome.

Also, your name scares me.

My pet disposal management system is having a danger room.  Sure, dwarves get unhappy thoughts when their cats get impaled on spikes, but *I* get way less unhappy thoughts when there aren't a crapton of cats cluttering up my fortress.

[Train Poacher]

Thanks a lot, guys. I'd forgotten that you can fit a stupid number of animals in a cage. I'll probably wind up doing that. Honestly, the only reason I let my cats run wild is so I could get a bunch of kittens to turn into soap.

It probably was the refuse pile that was attracting them after all.