40d Talk:Cat

Old Age?

How old do cats have to be to die of old age? Or is it random? One recently died in my fort, and I'm not sure how old my fort is. --Rotten 20:46, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Bones, etc. count

Wile butchering cats I always got stacks of 3 bones... Anyone, check this, please. --User:Dorten

Cats are size 3 in the raws so 3 stacks of bones would make sense to me. Maybe they are taking the numbers from kittens, likewise you probably get 3 meat. Can someone confirm this, I don't trust my reading of the raws. --Shades 04:00, 25 January 2008 (EST)

Bone#=Size --Savok 12:58, 3 June 2008 (EDT)

Disable Cats?

I'm getting annoyed with all these cats, is there a way to delete them? Maybe removing their creature details? --AlexFili 05:38, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

Yep, that's the way. Just look for the file raw/objects/creature_domestic.txt and delete the 'cat' creature. Although personally I wouldn't recommend that, since if you just delete the [VERMINHUNTER] the cats act like normal animals, they don't go around slaughtering rats and roaches and they dont 'adopt' owners.--Stinhad Limarezum 12:28, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Is there anyway to remove cats adoption behaviour whilst leaving their rat catching intact?----

None known. The two are tied together in the deeper game code. (If you give, say, dogs the [vermin catcher] tag, they begin to adopt owners same as cats.)--Albedo 17:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I know this is an old comment, but for anyone looking at the talk page that might not know this:

You can remove cats' owner-adopting capability by replacing [VERMINHUNTER] with [AT_PEACE_WITH_WILDLIFE], [RETURNS_VERMIN_KILLS_TO_OWNER], and (most importantly) [HUNTS_VERMIN]—which, along with [ADOPTS_OWNER], is what the [VERMINHUNTER] tag actually implies.--Asfghn 05:25, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Too injured?

Right after the last siege, I've had a sudden surge of odd announcements along the lines of "Tame Cat Algazud Knogger cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Too Injured". Several cats exhibit this behavior, none of them actually wounded in any way I can tell. Anyone else seen this? -Fuzzy 17:51, 9 September 2008 (EDT)

I'm guessing that the vermin the cat just killed and wants to move to the stockpile is what's tripping the injured message. I'm seeing it I think every time a cat kills a vermin. HeWhoIsPale 18:27, 9 September 2008 (EDT)

Ah, well it's still happening. I took a look through the bug list and someone has listed it under "Announcement spamming". No response yet from The Toady One as best I could tell. It's annoying, but I already have to deal with a lot of spurious cancellation messages, so it's liveable. -Fuzzy 12:00, 10 September 2008 (EDT)

See Cat cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Too injured. The cat needs something to grasp with, apparently; either you make a type of grasping mouth and call it CAT_MOUTH, and assign it to CAT, or just change the CAT raws from [BODY:QUADRUPED:TAIL:2EYES:2EARS:NOSE:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:MOUTH] to [BODY:QUADRUPED:TAIL:2EYES:2EARS:NOSE:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:MOUTH:UPPERBODY_PINCERS]. See what he did there? Version .40d. --Jellyfishgreen 03:24, 30 September 2008 (EDT)

Indeed... whoever wrote that FAQ entry must have been a very wise and knowledgable person. Truly a paragon among men. -Fuzzy 13:00, 30 September 2008 (EDT)

It is only right that we should link there from here and let his teachings be known more widely. --Jellyfishgreen 11:49, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Added to the page. --GreyMaria 14:34, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Closed door method of impounding cats

Recently, a method was posted to isolate cats by means of tightly-closed doors, luring the owner there by drafting, and then letting him leave while the cat is stymied. I haven't had means to test this exact method, but I do know that cats and other pets will eventually get out of the tightly closed doors if there's ever another Dwarf that will walk through. My experience is that cats especially will just sit by the door with a question mark, waiting for someone to open it so they can slip out (just like real cats!). Similarly, I've seen accounts of people on the board who've noticed peculiarly sneaky muskoxen using the same tactic to get into fortresses. -Fuzzy 15:19, 11 November 2008 (EST)

In addition, wouldn't this method just cause the pathfinding algorithm to continually execute for the cat, slowing down the FPS anyway? Also this could be moved to the 'catsplosion' page, rather than being here... --JK 20:45, 8 January 2009 (EST)

All animals will pile up at tightly closed doors because they path like dwarves, so they don't understand the door won't open for them. This should kill your FPS because they are queuing the pathfinding algorithm repeatedly. Now, if you really want to control the cat problem with tightly closed doors, build a Upright Spike trap right next to the door with a lever on the other side. When the cats pile up, have someone go pull the lever. (Works best with 2 doors airlock fashion so you can forbid the other door when you notice a cat pileup to stop dwarves from pathing through the room and letting the cats out before their death). --Squirrelloid 21:47, 8 January 2009 (EST)

Make the floor of the cat impound a retracting bridge. When pulled, cats fall 1 z-level into a completely sealed walled-in room. Now there is no door to escape, and cats cease pathfinding in favor of standing there pitiably until the end of time. Deconstruct a wall to let them out. --Rkyeun 08:27, 10 January 2009 (EST)

I've also noticed that cat's aren't very smart. I once saw 3 trying to get into a human house because there was a lizard inside. They wouldn't go find another victim, they seemed focused on that one lizard. this could potentially have some use for cat death traps.--Drunken dwarf

Virgin birth?

My current fortress is an obsidian wasteland, complete with haunted area that is spawning undead animals regularly. I only brought 1 cat with me. I haven't kept an eagle's eye on the creatures in the area, but my single female cat just gave birth to kittens. No immigrants have arrived, but I've had the first two caravans come through. They don't bring (uncaged) cats with them, do they?

Well, the gestation period for cats in RL is about two months and I'm not sure just what the gestation period is in DF. It's entirely possible that traders will have a stray cat tagging along, so if its the opposite gender... you know. I did think that she was pregnant from the start (as in mated before the game 'started'), but given that a year and a half went by...--Smjjames 18:12, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I've seen other evidence to suggest that caged males can impregnate uncaged females. Certainly, we have seen evidence that animals which have never come in contact with each other can mate. My most recent fortress included a large array of paired animals (cats, dogs, horses, donkeys, muskox). All of them gave birth within a very narrow time frame right as Autumn began. This suggests that all animals have the same 2-season gestation period. -- 05:07, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Chains

Can't you just chain them instead?--CrazyMcfobo 01:25, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I think you can't chained named pets. Just strays? - Cayzle

You "think"? For trivial questions, trivial experiments are called for - and let's be honest, this is hardly a complex or hard-to-answer question. Just find out instead of wondering or guessing. If you have an empty restraint (chain or rope), pets do not appear on the list of possible animals to assign to it, only "stray" animals - with or without names!. (An animal that is "named" is not the same as "being a pet".) Note also that if a stray cat is chained, and then later adopts someone after that, the "owner" (the dwarf, not the cat) will get bad thoughts until the animal is released. --Albedo 19:19, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

paused adoption

i'm one of the types to spend about 2 hours just designing keeping the game paused and draw digging plots when 4 games out of 5 i get a "(so in so) cat has adopted (named dwarf)". always happens if a dwarf has a liking to cats and never otherwise. not a bug report or anything just a finding as nothing is "wrong". Soul4hdwn 00:03, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, had this happen too. It appears a few of the timers (liaison conversations, adoption, etc.) work off of a real time counter, and not seasons. Incredibly aggravating in this case.--Gotthard 04:53, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The question is, did the dwarf like cats before the cat adopted him? --RomeoFalling 05:09, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

There seems to be a strange issue with using the mouse to designate areas which causes some events to act as though a game tick has occured with each click, which results in meetings progressing, record-keepers performing record-keeping, and cats adopting owners even when the game is paused. Using the keyboard doesn't seem to cause this to happen.--Quil 23:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It's a known bug.--Albedo 11:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Cats fixed?

However, in earlier versions, because they lack body parts that can grasp, they will cancel
the task with a "too injured" message,

"In earlier versions"?! When did this get fixed? We're still using 0.28.181.40d, and have been for years. No new version, no code fix, neh?--Albedo 10:20, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I think in Mayday's release cats have [grasp]. VengefulDonut 14:34, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Cannot link Animals

I can't determine how to link animals to Category:Animals. --Bombcar 18:19, 3 April 2010 (UTC)