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[Zantan]

I recently set my dwarves to gather refuse from outside so that they could butcher all the animals killed outside of my base by my soldiers.  That is now happening, but I also have lots of dwarves running halfway across the map to gather butterfly remains.  One has already died in an ambush.  I tried forbiding corpses on death, and reclaiming butcherable corpses individually, but that doesn't seem to have fixed the problem.  Is there a better way to go about this?

[Quietust]

Simple - prevent your cats from going outside.

[Slogo]

If the corpses are already dropped forbidding them on drop isn't going to help. Generally allowing outside refuse + forbidding all dropped items/corpses works but if you already have a lot of junk hanging around outside its not going to help.

[Derakon]

This is one of the reasons why I don't like bringing cats at all. Sure, the bad thoughts from getting accosted by vermin are worse than the bad thoughts from going through miasma clouds, but that doesn't take into account the bad thoughts I get from not being able to see what's going on. Plus my dwarves waste less time hauling vermin corpses to the refuse pile. Doesn't stop migrants from showing up with cats, of course.

As for your original problem, you could modify your refuse piles to not accept vermin corpses. Unfortunately you'll have to pick them out of that massive list of all the creatures in the game.

[Skorpion]

Actually, vermin come under Remains, to my knowledge.

Otherwise, just get rid of the cats. Vermin > miasma. Vermin affects a few, miasma in the dining room affects EVERYONE.

[Duuvian]

The solution would be to go into the q > (s)ettings menu for stockpiles. Then go through and make sure the corpses you want are highlighted and the ones you want left laying around aren't. Beware thought that this will allow your cats to leave their miasma bombs laying in your fort.

What I usually do is have an indoor and outdoor refuse pile each with their own settings and one has a take from stockpile order on the other one (which switches if necessary). That way butcherable animals end up in my indoors stockpile next to the butcher shop, while goblins, vermin and other non-butcherables rot to bones outside and then the bones are retrieved to the indoors stockpile so they don't turn to vapor.

This however won't solve your problem of having them run out to get vermin corpses. My recommendation in this case would be to do the above, but keep vermin out of the stockpiles via the menu, then if the cat insurgents drop a miasma bomb in your fort you can dump it with a d>b>d. If your dump zone is outside that is. I usually build my stonecrafter outside so I won't have to alternate between stone dump points and a dead vermin dump point.

[2xMachina]

I think pets don't leave their kills lying there. They'll drop it at their owners feet. So, I think no stray cats should prevent the remains outside the fort problem.

[martinuzz]

I just witnessed one of my dwarves chasing it's cat, to grab the refuse it was hauling. So it seems, cats don't drop remains at their owners feet, but rather the owners snatch it from the cats.
It could also be that the infamous cat-bug is the culprit here. I was too lazy to fix it properly, so I get the 'cat cancels store item, too injured' message frequently

[Flaede]

there is an Options menu item that sets corpses to be forbidden on death. does that extend to remains?

[Grendus]

The easiest solution is to cage all cats but one. Usually I only allow one free cat at a time, who quickly gets adopted and proceeds to fill Urist McCatLover's path with firefly corpses. Since these are inside my fort, my dwarves don't have to cross the world, just little purple clouds.

I find it beneficial, personally. Hauling dead animals generates jobs for fortress economy, and the unhappy thoughts generated by vermin are horrendous for those of us who don't have the pump skill to build a waterfall.