Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Madcat]

The ability to spay cats would be nice...

...though how a dwarf would do that with medieval equipment is anyone's guess.

Spaying wouldn't work, but neutering the males would.

[Tormy]

Hi!

Tormy: Well, cats are one of the basic features most users have an opinion about. They also have some unique rules tied to them (like adopting dwarves rather than the other way around). I mean, if you started a thread about "donkeys" or "muskoxes", I think you would probably run out of species-specific things to add.

And then there is of course the cat-lover and dog-lover divide

You know something just popped up in my mind. 
What if dogs would attack cats randomly in the fortress? I mean that is how it goes in real life most of the time. Dogs just dislike cats! 
I guess that would take care of the cats overbreeding problem... 

[Granite26]

Hi!

Tormy: Well, cats are one of the basic features most users have an opinion about. They also have some unique rules tied to them (like adopting dwarves rather than the other way around). I mean, if you started a thread about "donkeys" or "muskoxes", I think you would probably run out of species-specific things to add.

And then there is of course the cat-lover and dog-lover divide

You know something just popped up in my mind. 
What if dogs would attack cats randomly in the fortress? I mean that is how it goes in real life most of the time. Dogs just dislike cats! 
I guess that would take care of the cats overbreeding problem... 

Seriously...  I think that the issue is just that cats don't have either of the two major sources of animal death in the fort.  (Butchery and Wardog death).

Then again, cats have long had a rl reputation of forming comunities and breeding out of control when people let them.

Urist cancels sleep: Mewling Cat
The spinng shoe strikes the stray cat in the head, it explodes in a shower of gore
Stray Cat has been struck down.

[cbfog]

I let 2 adults cats roam the fort and cram all the rest into a cage. This way they do not adopt or pathfind. And it's like a catfridgerator. You just set one free and then slaughter it whenever you need some leather or bones.

And if you dont need any of this, you can still sell cages full of cats to caravans for a decent price. I once had a single cage with probably 25 kittens and several random mules and puppies that went for around 3,000 turtles.

[nordo]

There's lots of options for keeping the stray cat population down, but what can you do for a fort that already has 2-3 dozen named cats?

I tried lowering their boiling point so they would dissolve, but that left me with no cats at all.  Somehow, it killed a dwarf, too.  Maybe he was eating some cat meat at the time?

I think the solution is just going to be [MAXAGE] set to 2 and I'll pretend they have leukemia or feline aids or something.

(btw: does anybody bother with trappers when there's only roaches and lizards to catch?  I mean really, what do you do with a stockroom full of tame turtles?)

[Neoskel]

I don't see cats as useful for vermin control in certain fortresses. I.e. food-less fortresses, like glaciers and rocky wastelands (i know there's wild animals, but the more dangerous (evil, savage, evil+savage) areas make it much much less viable to hunt). Then you want a dedicated trapper instead of cats. Capturing instead of killing vermin does 2 things. It stops the vermin from eating your food, and it supplies you with a new source of food: the vermin themselves.

Dwarves will eat any (well, not fire snakes) untamed captured vermin in cages or animal traps. And i'm not talking about them starving because of lack of real food, they'll happily snack on even a hated vermin as long as it's in a cage/animal trap if the stockpile is full to bursting with *cat tallow roast*s.

Plus, demon rats have an enjoyable spicy taste. 

[Viprince]

I don't see cats as useful for vermin control in certain fortresses. I.e. food-less fortresses, like glaciers and rocky wastelands (i know there's wild animals, but the more dangerous (evil, savage, evil+savage) areas make it much much less viable to hunt). Then you want a dedicated trapper instead of cats. Capturing instead of killing vermin does 2 things. It stops the vermin from eating your food, and it supplies you with a new source of food: the vermin themselves.

Dwarves will eat any (well, not fire snakes) untamed captured vermin in cages or animal traps. And i'm not talking about them starving because of lack of real food, they'll happily snack on even a hated vermin as long as it's in a cage/animal trap if the stockpile is full to bursting with *cat tallow roast*s.

Plus, demon rats have an enjoyable spicy taste. 

I'm not sure about this but I thought (exotic pet) tagged vermin is snakcked upon without a second thought but stuff like rats withouth the tag not being considered exotic food are only eaten by specific rat meat loving dwarves?

Anywho I keep my trappers busy and they keep catching fancy things like fluffy wamblers and fairies and the little critters quickly end up being gobbled up by the random dwarf but I rember in an older frostress having a rat in an animal trap for a full season until I finally decided to tam him (and obviously on one adopted him )

I could just be speculating though...

As far as cats go I personnaly don't find vermin a problem itself so I generally don't bring cats. They kill cave spiders which is a pain and make my trapper's jobs a little harder. Vermins at worst will rot some food and cause negative thoughts but I usually produce 1000% the amount of food I really need and even export doesn't manage to get rid of all of it so I really don't care about the vermin eating the food and booze and as far as negative thoughts go the legendary food, drink and Dining hall makes my dwarves forget about their kid who just got his head hit clean off his body and crushed their puppy which was standing 10 feet away 5 minutes ago so vermins are free roaming in my fort.

My experience is lots of vermin are less trouble then any cats at all, no population control and less FPS drain and no pets to die and cause significant negative thoughts.

[G-Flex]

I let 2 adults cats roam the fort and cram all the rest into a cage. This way they do not adopt or pathfind. And it's like a catfridgerator. You just set one free and then slaughter it whenever you need some leather or bones.

And if you dont need any of this, you can still sell cages full of cats to caravans for a decent price. I once had a single cage with probably 25 kittens and several random mules and puppies that went for around 3,000 turtles.

This is probably a really stupid question, but how do you assign tamed animals to a cage and *then* sell it? The only way I see to assign animals to a cage is one that's built, and you can't sell items built as buildings, so how does it work, exactly?

[Osmosis Jones]

I tried lowering their boiling point so they would dissolve, but that left me with no cats at all.  Somehow, it killed a dwarf, too.  Maybe he was eating some cat meat at the time?

Evaporating cats; one more reason this game is so damn awesome.



Seriously though, I've never had a problem with the cats. I find the aforementioned catfridge works wonderfully, as long as you grab any cats early (cage the parents, and keep some kittens out, they can't breed but still catch vermin).


Also, I'm pretty sure you still can't sell them. You just end up selling the cage. This, and the OP topic are actually the inspiration for some awesome comics;

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2008-04-21
http://www.threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2008-05-12

[Deathworks]

Hi!

I let 2 adults cats roam the fort and cram all the rest into a cage. This way they do not adopt or pathfind. And it's like a catfridgerator. You just set one free and then slaughter it whenever you need some leather or bones.

And if you dont need any of this, you can still sell cages full of cats to caravans for a decent price. I once had a single cage with probably 25 kittens and several random mules and puppies that went for around 3,000 turtles.

This is probably a really stupid question, but how do you assign tamed animals to a cage and *then* sell it? The only way I see to assign animals to a cage is one that's built, and you can't sell items built as buildings, so how does it work, exactly?

Well, that is exactly how you do it:

* Build the cage
* Assign the animal to the cage
* Wait until the animal is actually placed inside the cage
* Deconstruct the cage

This will give you a cat cage or whatever else you have put in the cage.

You can then sell that cage with its content to the caravans, and at least in 2D it worked just fine for me (I remember selling of a poor kitten who sustained serious injuries in a fight with river creatures (cats back then did help in battles and earned their names which they didn't automatically get back then) and was really pitiful to look at).

Deathworks

[G-Flex]

Oh, thanks. I always assumed that deconstructing the cage would release the creatures.

This reminds me of that time I deconstructed some restraints with the tamed animals still tied to them. This resulted in a musk ox and a giant desert scorpion running around with the ropes still tied to their necks (or cephalothorax in the case of the scorpion).

[WCG]

I don't seem to have much problem with cats. I just cage all the kittens (and puppies), and when I get too many, I butcher the new ones that keep getting born. Horses, cows, and donkeys are a bigger problem for me, because pastures don't work too well. No matter what I do, they keep escaping.

And I use kittens as watchguards and goblin bait, tied to ropes at key areas, so I lose a few in every attack. I really don't know what the fuss is about (although I wish they wouldn't kill my cave spiders, they seem to keep the other vermin down, too).

Incidentally, my dogs seem to have stopped reproduction. I've got a large wardog population, but no puppies at all. Well, maybe that's just temporary.

This reminds me of that time I deconstructed some restraints with the tamed animals still tied to them. This resulted in a musk ox and a giant desert scorpion running around with the ropes still tied to their necks (or cephalothorax in the case of the scorpion).

Heh, heh. This happened to me, too (though in my case, it was just kittens). I finally had to tie them to a different restraint, just to get the previous one untied from them.

Bill

[G-Flex]

I just set the ones tied to them to be dumped, then undumped them once they got yanked off. Similar to goblin-disarming!

[Axe27]

Dude, Just let cats multiply until you have about ten or so breeding pairs, and you've got yourself a food supply! Just slaughter the kittens endlessly.

Yes, and for the record, cats are very similar to mice in how much they will produce. A mouse can have about 100 descendants in a year, a cat about 20.In real life, cats, if left to their own devices, will breed out of control, which was partially a reasoning for being almost annihilated in Europe during the Middle ages (Unfortunately, this killing of cats let the rat population breed out of control, leading to the plague).

[sev]

Incidentally, my dogs seem to have stopped reproduction. I've got a large wardog population, but no puppies at all. Well, maybe that's just temporary.

This has happened to me, too.  It's been two or three years since there's been a puppy in my fortress.  Somewhere around the ten-year mark, they just stopped breeding -- even the ones that had grown up from puppies just the year before.