Print

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

[Callista]

I just got into DF about six days ago, so I'm an utter newbie... so don't laugh please. Most likely this has a simple solution I'm overlooking.

But... i have 67 cats in the fortress. I have 92 dwarfs currently. I embarked with a cat and one of the migrants brought another, and they started breeding. Now there are cats everywhere. There are vermin corpses completely blocking my refuse stockpile. I think my game is starting to slow down a bit, too, though that could be because I've been going a little crazy with the mining trying to find gems because I have no wood and I have to trade for it and gems are valuable...

I thought about slaughtering the cats, but all but three of them are pets and I guess you can't slaughter pets. I couldn't forbid those three from becoming pets because the screen says they are "uninterested" and won't switch them to unavailable. I have them marked for slaughter now, but what about the rest of the cats?

I can deal with 67, but I can also see where this is going. Roughly half of them are females, and I'm going to end up with about a hundred kittens the next time those cats have litters. And when the kittens grow up...

Uhm. Yeah. So, don't laugh, please, but how in the world am I supposed to control my cat population? I want my dwarfs to be alcohol-soaked beards on legs, not crazy cat ladies!

[Quietust]

Since you have more than 50, none of them will breed. However, once the cat population drops below 50, then all of the females will produce at least one litter.

There are some trap designs for getting rid of cats, but be warned that their "owners" will get quite unhappy about their pets dying.

[Teneb]

You'll either have to deal with the situation and kill any new kittens, or kill all cats and find a way to offset the negative thought the "owners" will receive.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Use your surplus kittens as cavern explorers, or goblin bait, or testing for your newest trap, or...

[proxn_punkd]

Sounds like you've discovered the wonderful phenomenon known as the catsplosion.

As Quietust said, they won't breed at more than fifty cats. There are some tricks to getting rid of pet cats, but losing pets to anything but old age will give unhappy thoughts to the owners, and the cats will breed again as soon as you bump off enough to get the number below fifty.

If/When depopulation happens enough for the cats to breed, have a cage built and put the kittens into it immediately. This will stop them from pathing around the fortress eating your framerate (and your vermin), it will prevent them from adopting dwarves, and when they grow up will prevent them from breeding. Using pens and pastures will also reduce the pathing, but not the adopting or the breeding.

A really !!fun!! option might be to move most of the pet cats into a pen/pasture full of lever-operated spike traps, and order a dwarf to pull the lever on repeat (the !!fun!! would come from Urist McCatLover flipping out after a dozen kitties get impaled).

[Callista]

Catsplosion? Hah... yeah, that's pretty much what's happening. At least it's something that other people have encountered and not some n00b move, unlike the two times I had to abandon a fortress due to flooding it entirely during well construction...

I think I'm going to stick them in a pasture, for now, and experiment with killing one that's owned by a particularly happy dwarf. Would it work if I put the cat in a pit and had the dwarfs fill it up with water, or would they refuse to do that?

[Garath]

puting newborn into cages (except grazers) is always a good idea to help preserve your FPS, but since cats choose owners themself and can therefore escape cages, it becomes quite important to keep an eye on it. A cat loving dwarf may "own" more than a dozen cats (see the history of boatmurdered somewhere where the whole fort was slowed to a crawl because of too many pets in the main passageways, wether they were owned or not. The then ruler designated a whole lot for slaughter, the next decided not to... Dont know what happened exactly.)

[proxn_punkd]

Flooding a fortress is something everybody does at some point. It's not exclusively a noob mistake. Some people play for years and never realize there's a water pressure mechanic in place until they build a well below the aquifer/cavern/river it's drawing the water from. 

[Callista]

Yeah. I learned the hard way that floodgates are your friend when trying to make a well draw from a river.

[Quietust]

cats choose owners themself and can therefore escape cages

Wait... what?

Only tame animals marked as "Available" can be adopted while in cages (and will be released from the cage upon adoption). Cats cannot adopt while caged - the only risk is that they will adopt en route to the cage, but they'll still be caged anyways.

[Garath]

btw, on making money

some of the most profitable money making schemes dont actually involve anything you'd call precious

early on, make rock mugs, every rock produces 3 of them

as you get more animals, and slaughter more, plus your farming starts going, make lavish meals. You do not want to know the prices a masterwork elephant roast brings. A good cook can multiply the value of the ingredients by 5 or 6 or so, which DOES make it worthwile to buy those cheese and (better quality) meats from a caravan

as time goes on, you'll accumulate horn, bone and possibly shell material. Make them into crafts. Its not a big profit, but do you have another use for it? Or for those expert bonecrafters?

as your pig tail and other fiber producing farming gets off, you'll have lots of plant cloth available. Make crafts or make ropes from the cloth. Usually you dont need more cloth things and it gets a decent profit

overall, you're better off hanging on to most gems, for strange moods

[Garath]

cats choose owners themself and can therefore escape cages

Wait... what?

Only tame animals marked as "Available" can be adopted while in cages (and will be released from the cage upon adoption). Cats cannot adopt while caged - the only risk is that they will adopt en route to the cage, but they'll still be caged anyways.

thats what i meant sort of,

they can be caged early, but if you leave them to roam they'll decide they found an owner. Thats what i meant with "escaping cage"

[zwei]

Make pasture ( http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Pasture ) on surface near entrance and assign all your cats there.

Goblins will take care of your furry problem in few sieges/ambushes.

[Callista]

Y'know, IRL we'd just trap the cats, neuter them, and put them back to be much less of a nuisance to everyone concerned--overpopulation problem solved. (My old neighborhood had a vaccinated, neutered, eartipped feral population; the vet school used to volunteer their students to do the operations, so they didn't have to practice on people's pets.)

I don't suppose there are dwarf vets who can neuter animals (and probably take care of injured ones)? I'm guessing no, since I don't see a "veterinarian" skill anywhere.

[Nan]

You can also set up an automated pet-killing device. This might have the advantage of slowly reducing the population, helping dwarves manage their distress at losing pets.

In a well-used corridor, set up some Upright Spike Traps like this:

Code: [Select]

###############
#####     #####
      SSS
###############
###############
Using the designation-traffic menu, set the spikes to "low" or "restricted" traffic so dwarves wont walk over them, but instead take the long way around. However, pets ignore movement restrictions and will take the shortcut over the spikes.

Link the spike traps up to a lever, set to be pulled repeatedly. (you might want to use "less-lethal" spears, for example elvish wooden spears, or just copper/silver spears. Upright spikes, even wooden ones, inflict extremely nasty injuries on dwarves, while weak spears can sometimes be deflected even by clothes. You could even use training spears, but that's less awesome).

I can't remember who the credit for this awesome pet-slayer goes to.