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[Stadfradt]

Hi. I'm twenty years into my current fort and dead cats and dogs are being found quite frequently. Nothing in the reports. I've seen a few flashing like they're injured, again, nothing in the reports -- some even giving off miasma as they wander around. I've had many of them for a fair amount of time.

The main confounding factor here is the possibility of clown juice being left after a mining mishap enrolled my fortress in clown college. I imagine it's possible they're licking up clown juice left behind from the fiasco, even four-years after the fact. I don't know how to check, other than looking at every individual tile, which I'm not inclined to do.

I need to thin out my animal herd for FPS reasons, so the deaths are not unwelcome; however, the curiosity is bugging me. Thanks in advance.

[Moeteru]

View one of the ones giving off miasma and bring up the wounds tab. If the rot is caused by treading in something nasty then it should mainly be affecting their feet (unless it's some organ-specific toxin). If you check their inventory you can also see a list of contaminants.

[Stadfradt]

Great advice! Many of my animals are getting pretty old: I currently have a 16 y.o. dog, for example, so I think old age may have been a factor at one point, because I think one of my original two cats didn't get murdered by any monsters or mishaps, but the oldest of my three cats is 12 y.o. Surely the game models pets peggin' it from old age...?

Dogs and cats are tracking blood, many of them tracking werepanda blood, which is bizarre, since the werepanda incident was about fifteen years ago when a goblin bard transformed in the middle of the tavern where he killed a puppy and a war dog and then got mangled by my dwarves. (Every dwarf is military on a 2/10 year-round training schedule. Three FBs have been killed single-handedly by three different dwarves. It's making justice tricky: My sheriff has 96/100 strength according to Dwarf Therapist and the knuckleheads still insist on stealing artifacts but not wearing the masterwork steel helms I had made for them. Crime may not pay, but the parting gifts are a coffin and a slab each made by a legendary dwarf.)

But here's what you're reading this for: One cat, the 12 y.o., has clown juice on each foot, and each foot is turning up yellow in the wounds listing -- I think veterinarian needs to be bumped up on the development to-do list, until I consider what else is probably on the list and I realize it can wait.

Anyway, I followed the cat for about ten minutes real time and can confirm miasma coming from the cat, though the cat's feet did get cleaned, presumably by the cat. The injuries are still yellow. It could also be that old animals get really gassy. Regardless, clown juice. I don't like it.

(I tried following the cat for longer, but it was making me buggy.)

[gchristopher]

Animals do die of old age, but the miasma and injury are definitely not age-related. Sounds like you need some decontamination efforts. Fun!

[HungThir]

as i recall, things die of old age on the first day of the year only, so in an old fort you expect the "spring has arrived on the calendar" announcement to be shortly followed by a bunch of "x has been found dead" announcements

[Thisfox]

...... I've seen a few flashing like they're injured, again, nothing in the reports -- some even giving off miasma as they wander around.....

That sounds like a Forgotten Beast powder causing footrot. Your dorfs have shoes, but your pets can often track some nasty stuff around on their feet, causing all sorts of rot to happen if it's poisonous. I realise you've not mentioned an FB... but... could the Clowns also be possibly giving some similar nastiness off?

[Maximum Spin]

That sounds like a Forgotten Beast powder causing footrot. Your dorfs have shoes, but your pets can often track some nasty stuff around on their feet, causing all sorts of rot to happen if it's poisonous. I realise you've not mentioned an FB... but... could the Clowns also be possibly giving some similar nastiness off?

Yes, demons get procedural syndromes too; seemingly from the same set of options that forgotten beasts have.

[Thisfox]

Well, the cure for footrot (or at least prevention of having all your animals die of the stuff) is to have a foot bath. Just a little level1 or level2 water-flow walkway the dorfs and everything else have to wade through to get to the meeting hall would do: It would then was the feline and canine feet when they too have to walk through the water. Flow is important: It washes the icky stuff away. I usually just make a small waterfall falling into a wading pool with a meeting place and the food storage on the other side of it. Other than one dorf getting falling over drunk and collapsing in a pool of water, there haven't been any issues.

[Stadfradt]

Are contaminants visible, or do I have to make a tile-by-tile search under LOOK?

Water. Ugh. I am SO BAD with water. I'm so bad with water that trying to dump it to make obsidian killed more legendary dwarves than clown college, and I still have no obsidian.

Okay, but I can channel a light aquifer down to the third layer and make a new tavern/hall. (Most of the clowns are trapped in the first layer thanks to a dwarf who decided that collecting webs was more important than standing on station.)

Thanks for the input, everybody!

[Moeteru]

Contaminants should show up as differently coloured floor tiles, although in theory they could be invisible if the colour of the contaminant matches the colour of the stone layer you've dug out. As far as I'm aware contaminants on walls can be safely ignored since they can't spread to anything else.

For the foot bath a light aquifer should be perfect. First make sure there's a drain set up on a level below the foot bath (minecart, map-edge, or into the caverns), then dig a stairway up into the light aquifer layer. Ideally you'll want to dig up to the layer below the aquifer (i.e. the downward stair at the top should be in the bottommost damp layer) and dig out a very small room in this layer (say 3x3 to start with). Gradually expand the room, increasing the rate of water collection, until you reach a size where you get a consistent 1-2/7 water level in the foot bath. Don't have a long horizontal tunnel from the foot bath to the stairs up to the aquifer, otherwise evaporation may be a problem.

[Stadfradt]

Contaminants should show up as differently coloured floor tiles....

Cool.

I like your avatar, btw. If you haven't seen "Girls' Last Tour" I recommend it.

[Moeteru]

Thanks. It's funny you should say that since I just watched it a couple of weeks ago. It was really good.