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[shadowclasper]

While I know the general theory with cats is that having more than 1 cat is courting death for your Fort's FPS... I've actually found that using around 7 cats totally annihilates every vermin in your fortress. Seriously. You just have to keep on the ball when they have kittens and immediately throw them into the cage next to your butcher's shop PRONTO.

Anyone else have ways of dealing with cats? their uses, and how to prevent a catocalypse?

[Totaku]

Personally, when it comes to cats I generally keep a few around and do pretty much what you do. It's a simple yet effective method as long as you keep your eye on those cat population under control and give you plenty of meat in the long run.

Course on an unrelated note, I would wonder how it would be like to run a Kitty Herding Ranch?(that is if your CPU could handle it. ) Ok, so I see some of you already spotted this. It's still pretty funny when you think about it.

[Ubiq]

I usually just bring a single kitten, put a low priority on them with the caravans every so often, and buy one each time. As a result, I had one fort run almost vermin-free for fifteen years with four male cats.

[Airpi]

Kitten mittens, cat tallow, +Cat Skull Totem+s, they're all good. I've said it before, but I think a breeding pair (or several!) of cats can bring a lot to a fortress. Not anything you really need per se, but having a designated butcher and couple of cages is such a small investment anyway, so I usually keep some around. I think the rumors of the dangers of cats are largely exaggerated.

[Randall Octagonapus]

Personally cats have never been a problem for me. The real enemies are donkeys
I remember one time I realized that my fps was really slow so I checked and my dwarves had 280 pet donkeys
By the end of that year I had a legendary butcher

[The Dog Delusion]

Personally cats have never been a problem for me. The real enemies are donkeys
I remember one time I realized that my fps was really slow so I checked and my dwarves had 280 pet donkeys
By the end of that year I had a legendary butcher

I too have had to face the donkey scourge. For some reasons, my immigrants rarely bring cats, but pretty much every individual dwarf shows up with a pet donkey. I usually keep most of my non-pet animals caged, or I immediately butcher them...but it's hard to keep your animal population under control when immigrants keep showing up with more (already pregnant?) pets that you can't butcher. In one recent fortress, I had over 50 donkeys that had been brought to the fortress as pets, not counting the eventually donkey-splosion of baby asses and hee-hawing that eventually ensued. I read somewhere that Dwarf Companion was eventually going to (or already does?) have the ability to "un-pet" animals, but as far as I know, that's not yet possible...

Anyone have any good advice on getting rid of unwanted animals that are already designated as pets? is it even possible to butcher a pet?

[Simmura McCrea]

Personally cats have never been a problem for me. The real enemies are donkeys
I remember one time I realized that my fps was really slow so I checked and my dwarves had 280 pet donkeys
By the end of that year I had a legendary butcher

I too have had to face the donkey scourge. For some reasons, my immigrants rarely bring cats, but pretty much every individual dwarf shows up with a pet donkey. I usually keep most of my non-pet animals caged, or I immediately butcher them...but it's hard to keep your animal population under control when immigrants keep showing up with more (already pregnant?) pets that you can't butcher. In one recent fortress, I had over 50 donkeys that had been brought to the fortress as pets, not counting the eventually donkey-splosion of baby asses and hee-hawing that eventually ensued. I read somewhere that Dwarf Companion was eventually going to (or already does?) have the ability to "un-pet" animals, but as far as I know, that's not yet possible...

Anyone have any good advice on getting rid of unwanted animals that are already designated as pets? is it even possible to butcher a pet?

Killing the owner allows the pet to be butchered. If you don't want to do that, however, a pressure plate linked to a spike trap in a single tile corridor ought to do it, if you time it right.

[Deadmeat1471]

Anyone else have ways of dealing with cats? their uses, and how to prevent a catocalypse?

Bridge.
Magma below.
Garbage dump designation
?
Profit.

[Iden]

Kitten Mittens will solve the breeding problem. Smoothed stone floors + Kitten Mittens... they'll never be able to breed after that. No more cat problem.

I also think one of the problems may stem from the fact that there doesn't seem to be any rabbits. I think the exclusion of rabbits in Dwarf Fort has lead to cats breeding like rabbits, instead. Y'know, since rabbits can't do it, themselves. Maybe the inclusions of rabbits will fix the problem. Then you'd have a rabbit population explosion.... but at least then you can hunt them and trap them and slaughter them for a reliable food source.

Let's just be happy that there aren't huge litters every time a cat gives birth. Last thing we need is a little of 12 kittens followed by a litter of 4 kittens followed shortly later by a litter of 7 kittens......

[Derakon]

The main way to split pets from their owners is with traffic designations combined with doors. This stems from two effects: a) pets ignore traffic designations, and b) pets don't realize doors are pet-impassable until they get to them.

So make two parallel corridors, one marked restricted and one, slightly longer, marked high-traffic. Put two doors in the restricted one. The dwarf walks down the high-traffic corridor; his pet walks down the restricted one. Lock the two doors, and the pet is trapped, ready to be dealt with as you see fit.

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[zchris13]

The biggest thing is that cats only become problems after many years of running a fortress.

[Nidokoenig]

What I tend to do is try to make sure there's only one female cat on the map at any one time. I let the number of toms increase until vermin are gone, then cage the female if that's possible. This keeps the number of litters down. I do tend enable butchery on everyone, though, so slaughter is pretty quick.

That's a nice little trick there, Derakon. Now to work out which fiendish idea of mine to hook it up to. Do falling animals do damage if they land on someone? A catfall trap would be cool. If they do damage, great for gobbos. If they don't, a great way to freak out traders, and to split bodies to make more stacks of bones for decorating.

[Aspgren]

The economy of my current fort relies on cave spiders. For this reason cats are forbidden.

The first cat that came with an immigrant killed several cave spiders and the population in the dining room area took time to recover. I managed to lock that cat away but by now I have built an execiton chamber and kill any immigrant who dares bring a cat into the fort. The cat is then turned into biscuits.

ZERO TOLERANCE

[Time Kitten]

I'd perfer trappers, to capture spiders and pets and such, keeping vermin rates down, lag down, and emergency supper ready. but I like cats in dangerous areas, such as ones with exposed giant cave spiders better.  That, and I lock one in my food store.

[martinuzz]

I bring 2 cats on embark. Kill the female.. Buy some more from caravans.. Kill the females. 4 - 5 cats is good for vermin control. Never mind the cave spiders. I have a GCS farm anyway.
Migrants bringing female cats get a death job along with their cat.