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[ledgekindred]

So I'm trying to create a kittenfall above my meeting area.  (Partly for the trauma to harden my dorfs, partly for something to do with all these kittens and partly for the lulz.  Anyway.)  I have a 3x3 pasture assigned a few z-levels above with a shaft dug in the middle that drops down to the meeting hall.  The problem is that occasionally there's a catsplosion and a thousand cats and kittens all bust away from the pasture and run amok through the fort.  None of my dorfs make any attempt to re-pasture them at this point.  I've gone into the jobs screen while they are running around and I see no "Pen/pasture large animal" tasks pending.  The only way I've been able to effectively handle this is to a) delete and recreate the pasture, which causes all the cats to be dragged back to the new pasture, then b) wall them in, hopefully before they all escape again. 

What am I doing wrong?  Or is this sort of thing expected and the way to handle it is exactly what I'm doing?

[ab00]

It doesn't explain the absence of the pen/pasture jobs, but are there any wild animals and/or gobbos that frequent that area? That would scare the kittens out of the pasture, but also should create pen/pasture jobs.

If you have any caged invaders, try dropping one in there (of course with your military surrounding the area). That should get the kittens to move, and *should* created pen/pasture jobs.

[Shinotsa]

Wall them in, create spike traps with wooden training spears around the pit connected to a lever on the outside. Pull lever during catsplosion. They'll dodge in to the pit or be impaled. Lulz, hardening of dwarves, and senseless murder all in one. No need to waste dwarfpower on this one.

[Sus]

Lulz, hardening of dwarves, and senseless murder all in one.

Dwarf Points awarded.

I was going to suggest walling them in and building a pet-unpassable door for pitting/pasturing access, but This! Is! Dwarf! Fortress!

[foop]

Another idea, which I plan to implement tonight now that you've put the idea in my head, is to do away with the pasture entirely.  Instead, replace it with a walled enclosure with a pit one Z-level above.  Introduce the kittens into the enclosure by pitting them, and they won't be able to get out except by falling.

[Loud Whispers]

Why not just drop them from the top of the sky to the bottom of the world?

[Wastedlabor]

Build a Catscade. Probably not very efficient, but 1000% more dwarfish.

It's basically a dead end catwalk with water flowing over it. As cats rover around looking for verming, they'll walk across the catwalk and get washed off to the fall. Dwarves passing by get good thoughts from the mist of water and exploding felines.

This will get rid of pet cats too, and maybe some children.

[coolio678]

Dwarves passing by get good thoughts from the mist of water and exploding felines.

I'm sigging this.

[Jalen]

Perhaps assign them all to 1 cage. Lever it up and drown them all in one fell swoop?

[NonconsensualSurgery]

There seem to be limits to the number of animals dwarves will willingly pit/pen into an area.

The number of creatures that can be moved into a square by physics doesn't seem to have a limit. Pit them onto a retractable drawbridge or into an artificial stream.

Alternatively, the number of kittens that fit in a single built cage is infinite and perhaps you can work out something using this.

[ledgekindred]

I eventually got over the problem by walling off the containment area, digging above it, channeling a single tile over it and designating it a pit.  Now I have a few dozen cats, kittens, dogs and puppies all contained in a 3x3 area with a single channel in the middle waiting for them to dodge and fall into.

Which I wish they would hurry up and start falling since I'm running dangerously close to a tantrum spiral after some kind of syndrome mysteriously got into my fort and started paralysing dorfs so they would suffocate.  Despite the fact that most of my dorfs don't have many friends, apparently the couple of kids who died were very popular and caused some tantrumming and throwing of punches.

The kittenfall sounds lovely, but I have no water except in the caverns and frankly I think my fortress is too close to the edge of spiral to be able to finish.  Which of course makes it all the more dorfy to make the attempt only to have the fortress spiral into complete chaos with it only halfway finished...

[Garath]

children don't works, so they spend all their time socialisong. So yes, children dieing is not good

[silverskull39]

children don't works, so they spend all their time socialisong. So yes, children dieing is not good

I love how it's perfectly reasonable here that this is why you shouldn't let children die.

[Teneb]

children don't works, so they spend all their time socialisong. So yes, children dieing is not good

I love how it's perfectly reasonable here that this is why you shouldn't let children die.

Frankly, as long as you throw in cats before to make them not care anymore, there should be no problem with replacing said cats with children. After all, cats are not infinite (unless you are breeding them, but then your FPS will get murdered).

[ledgekindred]

Well this sucks.  Apparently 10 z-levels isn't a large enough fall to kill cats reliably.  Mostly they land and break many bones, but only rarely die.  I have some black bears that I've thrown in the mix and they hit and explode rather nicely.  I wonder if cats are too light to reasonably kill from dropping or I've just been unlucky with the first handful down the chute.  I guess I can extend the length of the fall and see if that helps, but what a disappointment after all the work it took to get them all shoved in there.

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