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[FourierSeries]

Well, OK, no FB related involvement so not that form of syndrome.

Aside from disasters DF manages to surprise us all with something weird at some point.

I've built this large water reservoir freezer thing. It's essentially a giant shallow stone box mounted over the centre of the fortress. My original plan was to allow mass creation and mining of ice to speed up ice block availability, allowing the meaningless giant snowflake overlay-everything-in-ice-constructions mega-project to speed along.

After many in-game years of dithering along I finally decided to try to fill it with enough water to give me something more to work with next winter. Fire up the pumps & get it up to about 3/7 water level. Hm, will have to wait for the murky pools to refill or .. nah, you know what? The hell with the ice project, let's use this as our main fresh water source ...

Found a few dead remains mixed in, designated them for dumping, & a little later .. more dead remains? More dumping designations .. oh, there's even more? How?

So I watch the reservoir like a hawk for a few in-game days when I finally see this mini "explosion" of mud cloud the waters as something waded in & was washed off. One of my Dwarfs on their designated dumping mission? Nope - it's a cat.

All three fortress anti-vermin cats have chosen this place to dump their kills. All of them. All the time.

Damn it!

Not exactly a disaster - I'm just dumbfounded as to why they've chosen to do this. I thought cats dropped this stuff off in front of the dwarfs? Or the kitchen, or the dormitory, or the dining room, or anywhere miasma can bloom to good effect. *Why* did they choose this place? Maybe because it's been dry & unused, & perhaps the most quiet section of the fortress for last 5 years or so?

Since they've managed to foul it all to hell & back I guess I'll just fall back to my ice generator idea. I am curious what the cats will do once I manage to fill it past 4/7 so they can't use it as their own personal refuse pile. I'm *certain* once it ices over they'll be back in force cover it in their own special love!

Or maybe they'll go back to dumping stuff in the Mayor's office in protest?

Cats.

Damn cats.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Did you designate any zones near the water?

[FourierSeries]

Did you designate any zones near the water?

Note that there's stairway access along the wall to get to the top & a stair way to get down into the reservoir itself. No mystery there, it's not like the cats are flying in or something.

Well, there's a pond designation one level above it all, accessible by the walls holding the water in. I was trying to get a head start on filling it during the winter months, having the Dwarfs pour as much "ice" in as possible. I've carefully confirmed it's just a pond designation, no random refuse stockpiles over it nor inside. The pond designation is still active of course, no reason to be but laziness.

Below this is the stone walled reservoir, nothing in there. There are two refuse stockpiles located about 15 - 20 tiles away. No direct connection, the interior of the reservoir is walled off from them.

The next floor down is a stone stockpile with 3 catapults set up to hose down a near by wall for target practice ( good training for the ballista battery covering the main entrance. )

And below that is a meeting area with another water source designation next to it.

Hardly OSHA approved but what can you do? 

Can't think of what weird combination of all this would cause the cats to insist on congregating here of all places, consistently wading thru 3/7 water to do so.

[GhostDwemer]

Vermin corpses never cause miasma. What sort of vermin corpses are they? Some vermin come in very large swarms. Cats will wade into the swarm and kill everything, leaving it where they killed it. Another possibility is that the random fluctuations in water level are knocking the vermin corpses out of the cat's mouth. The cats are just pathing through, or exploring their environment, and a wave hits them. I doubt it's a conscious "Hey I'm going to dump my vermin there" thing, caused by anything you did. Cats don't operate that way.

[Morpha]

Cats don't operate that way.

You laugh now, but wait until they block open the doors during a siege...