Wild Cats

[keltobin]

So, I kind of left my compound to be overrun with rats and I still haven't seen a wild cat. Am I missing something? I do have food and water dishes down. Maybe they need to be farther from the house?

[dissent]

Is the food dish still at 5/5 uses? Cats can nip in speedily to snaffle food and then vanish. You can find cats quite easily with the infra-rad, the Temperature Overlay in the top right. They stand out brightly when that is on.

I've never seen more than one wild cat on a map. Taming also takes quite a while. I would be more inclined to try and source cats from traders than trying to tame them.

[keltobin]

After playing for a few hours today, I finally found a wild cat den. I usually trade for cats or start with one, but I was curious and wanted to see if I could tame one. I did use heat map and tried to find it near the den (that's how I find bunnies), but no luck yet. At least I know that it's possible. Thanks for the reply!

[dissent]

I had a bit of fun taming my first cats. I put the bowl out but that takes too long. So instead I got an idle clan member to shadow the cat everywhere. As long as you're within a certain radius, the cat will gain 1/s to tameness. But get too close and it will run away, losing 1/s to tameness, and will probably also bolt down a hole. But just stick at it, making the clan member follow the cat (they wander to all edges of the map) and it will tame quickly enough.

I also usually Stop the clan member. They will still move wherever you make them, but won't turn around and head back to the settlement as soon as they stop.

[DeadMechGaming]

That's odd that you guys are having issues because in my current save I can't stop getting new tamed cats. I don't even have the dishes outside anymore and they still keep getting tamed. It might be though because of the fact my village is sitting right on like 5 dens so I get that constant taming that dissent was talking about.

[dissent]

That's weird, I can't say I've ever come remotely close to taming a cat without concerted effort to do so. I usually don't tame them because my standard start is to now take two at clan creation. I think the highest I've seen on a wild cat was about 20% tameness. But that was after at least two years and was on a cat that was already senior so I never bothered with it.

Has anybody noticed more than one wild cat on the map at any time? I've only ever seen one max.

[dissent]

That could be it, I usually go -1. Although, as you noted in another thread, it doesn't seem to affect rabbits.

[Grace1957]

I played about 4 years last night and had 3 tame,but they did it 1 at a time so I'm not sure they were there all at the same time or another one spawned when 1 tamed.

[dissent]

I'm in late winter year 1 on this playthrough and have seen neither a wild cat nor a den yet. I've done an infrared scan several times. The two foxes show up as well as the rabbits. But no cats that I can see.

[Jay]

Originally posted by dissent:

I'm in late winter year 1 on this playthrough and have seen neither a wild cat nor a den yet. I've done an infrared scan several times. The two foxes show up as well as the rabbits. But no cats that I can see.

I carefully checked my (winter map) - no cats. But that was night-time. Next morning, a wildcat comes running in to (fail at) taking my food.

Either it was hiding in a den at night when I scanned, or it came into being in the morning. Not sure which.

[dissent]

The thing is that I'm not even finding dens. They're quite easy to spot due to the branches around the edges, but I'm not seeing anything. This appears to be a cat-free map. Which I don't mind, my two starting cats have had one kitten and the queen is pregnant again. Four is as much as I'd ever need. I'll keep looking out for wild ones.

[miauukisu]

There's limit to total amount of cats, not separately for wild and tame ones.
So if you have tame cats at the level rat population lets to spawn, wild ones won't show up. And it does take a lot of rats to get to that fourth cat, not to mention fifth...