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[Septus]

Not so much skin, as kill. Long story short: 3rd fortress, I end up with four pet cats by the end of the first year through various means - immigrants arrive with cats, I missed a kitten's birth and it adopted a dwarf, etc.

Result: every thirty seconds I have to designate another animal corpse to dump. Most of these are either in the food store or in the main shaft, where 100% of my dwarves go at least twice a month.

Solution: a second, long hallway that I force every dwarf to walk down, making doors pet-passable and un-passable to juggle the cats into position to get drawbridge-squished. Great fun, that, but it took so much effort and time to make sure that no other animals or dwarves were in that doom hallway.

What are your favorite or most effective/efficient way to kill your dwarves' pet cats? Or do you find the very idea abhorrent?

Also... why in the name of FRAK do I have to designate rotting pest corpses for dumping? Why is this not an automatic function, like dumping gobbo corpses?

[Derakon]

Make an outdoor refuse pile and dwarves will automatically take remains to it, where they'll rot away without generating miasma. Make certain to block bones, skulls, shells, and fresh raw hides from it, though.

[Septus]

You may have to set a graveyard stockpile for pets. I can imagine, at least, that the corpses of the dwarves' beloved mind-controlling menace feline friends would be taken there and not to some ordinary refuse pile.

Speaking of which, you do have a refuse pile, don't you?

But kittens. I just butcher them as they shoot out from their mothers. And eh, if one more kitten is adopted along the way, meh, so be it. I'm not willing to wage total war against a catsplosion. Though I must say, it does sound like fun to dig a deep pit with a retracting drawbridge at the bottom and simply flinging all my kittens around down there without atomsmashing them.

...It must be done.

I have an outside refuse pile and a dump square as well. I do not currently have a graveyard stockpile though. I'll add one, and see if anything happens - although since I've slain all the kitties I'll have to wait until a migrant brings one along.

Did I mention that in the past I had a horrible breakup with a woman who had five cats, all of whom hated me?

Bill Hicks put it best: "If you want a box of s**t in your house, get a cat."

[Magua]

Dwarves with refuse hauling enabled will clean up vermin corpses that cats have dropped, if you have a refuse stockpile somewhere to accept them.

It doesn't seem to be a high priority job (though like everything else, it seems higher priority than "drag that wounded soldier off of the muddy battlefield"), but it does get done.

[Chromie]

You need a 'catwalk' ... a path over a pit/magma/spikes set on repeat with two sides -- one that's longer, set 'high traffic' and one that's shorter, set 'restricted traffic'. Animals will path down the shorter, while dwarves down the longer. Put a pet-impassible door to stop a cat in its' tracks on the shorter leg, and a floor hatch immediately in front of it, triggered by a pressure plate on the end of the 'dwarf side'. Put it somewhere your dwarves will walk back and forth across it frequently. It'll eventually get all the animals that follow dwarves around.

[LegoLord]

Well, if the dwarf is useful, I'll let him live.  If not, he dies so I can butcher the cat.

[Viroath]

Actually, it's more fun to get the Dwarf to kill his pet.  Just a lever assigned to him, and creativity.  And Repeat.

Of course, set up things like restricting traffic and other lovely things.

[Dorf3000]

Actually, it's more fun to get the Dwarf to kill his pet.  Just a lever assigned to him, and creativity.  And Repeat.

Of course, set up things like restricting traffic and other lovely things.

I have a lever at the end of a dead-end hallway, attached to 5-6 spike traps just behind it, and set to repeat with only the cat owner allowed to pull it.  It worked quite well, although it takes time for the cat to decide to go visit its owner and get spiked.  One thing I would change next time would be to put the spikes further away, I had one dwarf stop pulling to go eat or something, he started walking back and managed to spike HIMSELF on the trap still raising from the last lever pull.  Duh.

[pushy]

What are your favorite or most effective/efficient way to kill your dwarves' pet cats? Or do you find the very idea abhorrent?

I don't think you'll find anyone owning up to the second bit. They wouldn't want to be accused of being an elf, after all.

In my latest fort I'm going to set up an 'immigration office' soon, and any migrants who admit that they like cats for their aloofness will be, uh, given a cavity search to make sure they are not trafficking contraband