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[RLS0812]

So far over 40 kittens have bleed to death in my fort. I have no idea why.

 Under V ( view unit ) and W ( ) it shows the kittens have 1 random body part with a 'faint' or 'pale' descriptor next to it.
No injuries or illnesses. No combat logs.
 The kittens affected are flashing. This does not affect adult cats, or any dwarfs.

 Any ideas on what is killing my dwarf's future food supply ? 

 

[RLS0812]

[delphonso]

Can cats catch vampirism...?

[Bumber]

Forgotten Beast syndrome? Only other cause I can think of is mods.

[RLS0812]

Forgotten Beast syndrome? Only other cause I can think of is mods.

I do not use mods ... and no special beasts in the unit screen. I'm now over 80 dead kittens, all bleed to death !

[delphonso]

A syndrome from evil rain? Did you embark in an evil/sinister biome?

[anewaname]

If there are no combat reports, you probably have contaminated ground (by rain or FB). Follow the blood trails and follow the cats. An FB can spew toxins and then leave the visible map.

[Deus Machina]

Do kittens get bitten by spiders?

[RLS0812]

A syndrome from evil rain? Did you embark in an evil/sinister biome?

The map is 8/9ths in a terrifying biome, and 1/9th in an untamed biome ( still want trade caravans to show up ).
 If cause is all the sludge on the ground, than why are my adult animals and dwarfs not affected by Kitten Bleeding Syndrome ?

I did a 'clean all' command, and waited. No beasts showed up, and more kittens bleed to death.  My breeding stock of cats is going to die of old age pretty soon. Guess the dwarfs will have to eat a few elves for fresh meat 

[Deus Machina]

My first guess: brown recluse spiders. I could be wrong, since I'd figure other things would be affected, but if dwarves aren't collecting webs and nothing else is in their territory...
My next guess: It's an ingestion-based. Cats lick themselves clean.
Does clean-all clean what's on a creature, too? If not, there it is. Or perhaps the bleeding or necrosis is a long-term effect. If so, and it's cleaned from everything, expect it to stop when the last infected cat does.
Syndromes can be size-dependent, too. The threshold must be at or just below adult-cat-size. How are the cavies and rabbits the traders and immigrants bring?

[RLS0812]

This stated happening long before I dug into the first cave system, so spiders are not the cause. ( also no injuries reported when inspecting the kitten ). As I stated before, the only thing that shows up is "pale" or "faint" on one random body part.

Why is this syndrome not documented, or is it a bug ?
 Others have had issues with this since 2010 ( Google search ), there are no syndromes listed in the wiki that do this, there are no syndromes in the game's files that have this effect ... and no, it's not acid or boiling rain.

 At this point in time I am getting frustrated - I've spend several hours now going through the game's files trying to find the cause of the kitten's mass death - with no luck.

[delphonso]

Oh Armok! It's the drunk cat bug all over again!

[carewolf]

Well 0.34 is ancient, so yes, it might be old bugs literally biting.

Though I would also suspect vampires, the more friendly of them only eat animals. If you run out of kittens you might see other things bleeding to death.

[Loam]

Why is this syndrome not documented, or is it a bug ?
 Others have had issues with this since 2010 ( Google search ), there are no syndromes listed in the wiki that do this, there are no syndromes in the game's files that have this effect ... and no, it's not acid or boiling rain.

If the cause is indeed the evil sludge (which seems likely), then there won't be any documentation because syndromes for evil weather, as for FBs, Titans, and demons, are procedurally generated for individual worlds.

As for why dwarves don't get it, as others have said the syndrome could be caused by ingestion: only cats licking themselves would have cause to ingest the sludge, so naturally only they'd be affected.
However, it may still be contact-based: dwarves tend to wear shoes/socks, which would prevent their bare feet from picking up the sludge, but cats are barefoot.

As for why it doesn't affect adult cats, I admit I don't have a sure answer for that. My guess is that it has to do with size, for one of two reasons: 1) some syndromes are diluted with size, so perhaps the syndrome is weak enough to be shrugged of by adult animals, while kittens are still small enough to be affected; 2) larger creatures naturally have more blood to lose, so even if adults are affected by the syndrome they might not die from the bleeding.

Another possibility: is your fort in a "Scorching" region? Long exposure to such heat can melt fat and cause bleeding (which, again, smaller creatures might not be able to survive).

Either way, my advice is to quarantine your cats indoors. If the problem is sludge-related, a few kittens might still succumb (from picking up the syndrome before they were quarantined), but eventually the deaths will stop. At least this way you can test the hypothesis: if the deaths continue long after the quarantine... I don't know what your problem is.

[anewaname]

In embarks with the causes-bleeding sludge (in 43.05), I recall dwarfs dying when there was no water for cleaning, but not cats. I would guess that ingesting the stuff doesn't hurt the animal. The "kittens are small so they die quicker" makes sense. Every time a cat/kitten runs to the edge of the embark and back, they won't attempt to task a clean-self job until some time after they are back, and that might be enough for them to bleed out.