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[Dampe]

I have heard the horror stories about the catsplosion.
My computer's framerate is abysmal, so I'm not eager to bring cats unless there's a very good reason for it.
What animals are good to bring, in terms of both pack/farm animals and war dogs and the like?

[GiglameshDespair]

Turkeys. Eggs, meat, hides.
Pigs. Meat, milk, hides.

[deepfreeze78]

Female turkeys. They can provide a TON of food through eggs. Don't even need a male. I've fed a fort of 100+ with a hardly functioning farm, a couple hunters, and 6 turkeys. Most of the food was from the turkey eggs. All you have to do is make some nest boxes and you are set.

[sal880612m]

Outside of turkeys and pigs which are non-grazers. I would consider sheep which are grazers but have one of the lowest pasture size requirements and produce wool and milk and when slaughter will provide meat, bones, and hide. They aren't really necessary but having them can help prevent failed moods on occasion.

Take a cat or two. They are one of the few vermin hunters and will help stop your dwarves from getting some vermin related bad thoughts. If you want to prevent a catsplosion you could always take only male cats and ask for cats to be brought each caravan so you can grab more male cats as needed.

[blue emu]

Tame Helmet Snakes, if your Civ has domesticated them. Huge clutches of eggs, which will not hatch (no Child tag) and are only useful for cooking. The snakes are also aggressive and mildly poisonous, so they will help to defend you.

[PDF urist master]

Tame Helmet Snakes, if your Civ has domesticated them. Huge clutches of eggs, which will not hatch (no Child tag) and are only useful for cooking. The snakes are also aggressive and mildly poisonous, so they will help to defend you.

if you consider localized necrosis "mild", then yes.

[weenog]

Take some cats anyway. Just make sure you only bring along male cats, and immediately destroy (or cage) any that come along with migrants.  Vermin aren't just for bad thoughts, in extreme cases they can eat all your food, faster than you can farm or butcher more, and starve your fortress to death.

[WanderingKid]

A Male cat or two is an excellent choice.  Butcher all females as kittens.

Turkeys are excellent choices, as mentioned above. 

Dogs are great too.  They're not awesome defensively but good for guard duty, spare food, hides, etc.  They live a reasonable amount of time and can help out hunters as well.  Litters are reasonably sized.

If you can get your hands on them, Lions, Leopards, etc are vicious and highly useful.

[Merendel]

For pure egg laying turkeys are the best however if you are also breeding for butchering I'm partial to peafoul.  Fewer eggs per clutch than turkey but they mature in half the time and are not much smaller than turkeys.  they also have a longer lifespan so you dong have to replace the breeding stock quite as often.

[HooliganintheFort]

Commit female cat genocide.

[Panando]

The best animal is really no contest. Dogs.

A male cat is a fair idea if you want to keep down vermin. I normally don't bother.

As for other animals, the thing is, the food situation in dwarf fortress is just not hard enough to justify animals for food. Between slaughtering the pack animals, immigrant's animals, slaughtering wildlife (with hunters or even better military) and caravans (which always bring A LOT of food if you are low) you need never want for meat. That's not even accounting for farming, which especially with processing (quarry bush, sweetpod, booze cooking) and seed cooking can easily provide all the food the fortress needs.

If you bring animals it's for flavour and fps reduction so you may as well embark with whatever you like - the difference in value for points is not that great for most animals.

But dogs are good from a pure strategy perspective, I normally embark with 10 of them (5 boys, 5 girls), for a strict breeding program you only need one male, but I bring dogs more for running into battle and dying especially in the early game, and I don't want to max out my dog cap in one breeding season (not that there's anything wrong with that). If I hit a food crunch early on, and it happens, because I'm often lazy with food (relying on immigrant's animals and caravans) then I just slaughter a skinny, weak male dog to improve the genetics.
Dogs are great at generally making life difficult for thieves and snatchers, they can also distract ambushes and sieges. I basically make a lot of trainers (especially my important dwarves), and just let the dogs chase their trainer around. There are more organized ways you can use them but essentially I just use them for randomly getting in the way of attackers.

They are also great for savage embarks since a pack of dogs are a very good distraction for nasty megafauna beasts which can easily rip limbs off. Dogs have low lethality, so you really want a dwarf with a weapon for execution, but it's much better that the giant badger be wailing on your dogs, than your barely-armoured military dwarf. Avoid dogs and all other animals on zombification embarks.

On embarks with really rude wildlife (or undeadlife) the pack animals can also be used for defence, pasture or restrain them in the entrance and they might give an invader a lucky kick to the head. Horses and such are very powerful (I learned this when I stationed 5 dwarves with training weapons in a room with a wild horse), but they're cowards and run away unless cornered, so I couldn't recommend embarking with them for defence, but the freebie pack animals can be used that way.

[Arcvasti]

Pigs are the best meat animals, as they do not require grass. Plus, you can milk them. Dogs are decent in combat and don't need to graze. Cats are good vermin hunters, don't eat vegetation and are adorable. Turkey Hens give you lots of food in the form of eggs and are not herbivores. Those are the main ones, although cavies and rabbits are also pretty good.

[edgefigaro]

Nonono. Cavecrocodiles are the best. By far. Super valuable meat, ferocious as hell, and they lay ~40 eggs at a time.

[Henny]

Cages are your friend. I bring along a male and female cat and cage any of the little miscreants they spawn. Same with puppies and poultry. All in one cage. They won't adopt anyone or impact FPS while getting fatter.

[deepfreeze78]

Nonono. Cavecrocodiles are the best. By far. Super valuable meat, ferocious as hell, and they lay ~40 eggs at a time.

But you can't get those on embark...