How to make cats less proud

dwarf-fortress

I have several cats running around my fortress, killing vermin and doing what they do best. Every now and then, a cat runs into my fortress dragging behind it a fresh kill as if to say "Look at what I did!". This is promptly followed by a dwarf dragging the corpse back outside to the refuse pile.

Is there some way to stop this behaviour, or do I just have to live with it?

Best Answer

If you don't mind a bit of modding, you could remove the [RETURNS_VERMIN_KILLS_TO_OWNER] token from cats. This is how you'd do this for your current game:

  1. Save your game and find the save directory: it's inside the directory you installed DF into, and will typically be named data/save/regionN, where N is the region number you see when you load the game.

  2. Inside that directory, find the file raw/objects/creature_domestic.txt and open it in a text editor. (Notepad will do.)

  3. The first creature definition in that file should be [CREATURE:DOG]. Scroll down a few pages to find [CREATURE:CAT] below it. The beginning of that definition should look like this:

    [CREATURE:CAT]
    [DESCRIPTION:A small mammalian carnivore.  It is usually domestic and hunts vermin.]
    [NAME:cat:cats:cat]
    [CASTE_NAME:cat:cats:cat]
    [CREATURE_TILE:'c'][COLOR:0:0:1]
    [PETVALUE:20]
    [LARGE_ROAMING]
    [AT_PEACE_WITH_WILDLIFE]
    [HUNTS_VERMIN]
    [RETURNS_VERMIN_KILLS_TO_OWNER]
    [ADOPTS_OWNER]
    [COMMON_DOMESTIC][BENIGN]
    [CARNIVORE][NATURAL][PET]

  4. Notice the line that says [RETURNS_VERMIN_KILLS_TO_OWNER]. You can remove that line entirely, or just remove the brackets to deactivate it. (Text outside brackets is used for comments and ignored by the DF parser.)

  5. Finally, save the file under the same name. (If you change the filename, it won't load unless you also change the first line of the file to match. If you do change the first line and don't delete the original file, you'll end up with duplicate creature definitions that will cause DF to freak out in interesting ways.)

If you want to do this for all future games, you can do the same to the main creature definitions that are located directly under the raw directory in the directory DF is installed into: those definitions will be copied to any new worlds that you generate.

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