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[Dragonslayerelf]

I personally have started turning all of my food storages into pen/pastures and putting a few cats in each of them. Turns a catsplosion into a great help instead of a disaster in a fort of 175+ people. Also, I always settle near a river and put a pool in the first chamber of my fortress sourced from the river.

[wierd]

It might be good for verminating, but is bad for Cat Possession Syndrome.  (Dwarves are in frequent contact with the cats, increasing odds of developing a weakness to the cat mind-control.)

[TubaDragoness]

Easily avoided by choosing pastures based on the cat's sex. I make cat pastures over the food, booze (under the tavern), valuable refuse (bones), and seeds stockpiles, and assign one sex to the food/booze and the other to the bones/seeds. There's far lower traffic in one of those groups, and all my non-owned cats are still useful. The ones who do pick owners are visited frequently by them, so they have plenty of chance to drop off their kills and start hunting again.

And of course if it gets too bad, you can neuter your males with gelding.

[Khalari]

Slaughter/cage all female cats. Problem solved. Even if you miss a female, it's better than having only females and then having a single male impregnate all of them.

[PatrikLundell]

My male cats subjugating a dorf immediately receive a reward in the form of castration. The females are the first selections for life long guard duty in my entrance dog boxes, which later ones are pastured on my prisoner execution device, where a couple of lever pulls solves the problem.

If you don't want cats in the fortress, simply don't bring them, but if you want to have them to protect your food stocks (at least until you can get [giant] peregrine falcons), you need to breed them and slaughter the older ones off in a controlled fashion. I generally slaughter off the adults as soon as I have kitten of the same gender (which is the same process I use for all animals I breed except the wool producers [I don't bother with milk/cheese]).

[Saiko Kila]

I use cats as scouts, I call them rovers. They are dropped (usually in pairs) into a cave from above, then controlled by the placement and activation of meeting zones. Due to freak accidents  - involving uninvited quests - they have to be replenished periodically, before the whole caverns are mapped. It usually takes years (depends on cavern layout), but at least make cats contribute to the society.

Additionally they help in scientific experiments, just like real cats do.

[Urist McVoyager]

Pasturing cats in food piles is actually an old piece of advice that has been around for years. I do it in every fortress. Two pairs of breeding cats, and any excess kittens get sold to the caravans as pets.

[callisto8413]

I replaced doors in my hospitals with drawbridges.  My games, lately, always seem to have a lot of were attacks and the wounded will likely change.  To I isolate them till I know if they are safe the drawbridges allow me to turn a hospital bedroom into an isolation ward.  If they do end up inflected I keep them there till a one-Dwarf barracks/bedroom is made AWAY from the Fortress.  The Dwarf is made into a one-Dwarf Squad and stationed within it, once again closed off with a drawbridge, to only be released during a siege.  Otherwise they spend their time training and slowly going crazy as my living weapon.   

[Urist McUristUrist]

I started doing this after noticing how dwarves often haul whatever they just made to stockpiles themselves:

Code: [Select]

=RRRRRRR
=R###RR&
=+###<+&
=R###RR&
=RRRRRRR
Where # is workshops, + is doors, = is a material stockpile, R is rock, & is a bedroom and < is stairs to a product stockpile.

It's supposed to reduce hauling times and the time it takes for a dwarf to get to their workshop after sleeping (workshops are profiled and beds assigned) while looking somewhat nice.

[pamelrabo]

I like to stick with my civ as much as possible, so I usually have a "close all accesses and open floodgates" lever in case a werebeast spreads the curse to an unmanageable amount of people. Otherwise, the migration waves bring a constant drip of werecursed dwarves.

So, if everything's lost, every citizen dies drowned.

But this is DF and I can't tell wether this qualifies as 'weird' or not anymore.

[scourge728]

I wasn't aware it wasn't normal to pasture cats on the food stockpile

[DakkaDakka]

Been a long time since I played, but in the event of a werebeast infestation, I establish a chamber with two airlocks. This serves as a vault for those who may be werebeasts.

There's an input stockpile of stone and an output stockpile of finished goods. They then become immortal crafters; a slave caste of ringmakers, invisible to the world and essential to our wealth.

If any dwarf displeases me, he will join them. I am tempted to offer visitation rights for family members.

[Naryar]

I usually just embark with male cats only, and the few female cats that come into my fort... well, just butcher the kittens. I don't think the catsplosion is a problem nowadays with all the tools we have to stop it.

But this is DF and I can't tell wether this qualifies as 'weird' or not anymore.

I'm pretty sure self-destruct big red buttons levers are fairly normal in DF culture.

[Hanslanda]

I build drop chambers for prisoners. Tall enough to wound them, but usually not kill. Then I put repeating spikes in the floor, haphazardly. Whittle down the survivors, release the few left into a capture chamber, rinse and repeat over time to get the luckiest goblins gathered up.

Then drop them in an airlock between me and a forgotten beast. Or a Bronze Colossus. If they kill it, release them. If they die, oh well. I also like building massive drop towers over my fort entrance and dropping the previous goblin siege on the latest one to demoralize them.