Hey!
I'd been playing and lurking and growling at my fps through about a dozen forts when a week or so ago I had a curious thing happen. which is why I now registered to add something to this thread.
For unremembered reasons I had a single tile room with a locked door that had once served as a dump. I don't remember what was in there, but a brilliant thing happened!
a roach spawned in that room and outside of it cats were congregating like mad.
i build a 2 tile draw bridge that would close on the square in front of the door and killed over a dozen mostly female cats including several pets in my first go. I forget why I had so many female cats to begin with as usually the first thing I do is to dismantle my wagon to build a woodshop, chair and animal cage for those beasts, but hey, messy dumb history or not, I'd discovered something I'd not read about here or on the wiki.
This evolved to be the cat-smasher! which is quickly added to a side corridor:
#####
hallway
#d#d#
# bBL#
#D#L#
#C###
#####
#-wall
D-locked door
d-open doors
b-where the bridge lands
B-bridge when openend
L-levers for bridge and cage
C-cage with assorted rodents collected by the kennel dude.
ok, i admit, even though i've built this twice i've not had a cat problem since my discovery and the CAT SMASHER remains in a state of undetermined utility.
BUT! in case of a catxplosion ... pull the cage-lever to call all cats to the inner door for smashing, then, uh, smash them by pulling the bridge lever.
*not responsible for tantrum spirals*