Kitten
f kitten  
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 3 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 2 |
| Base experience | 20 |
| Speed | 18 |
| Base AC | 6 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 150 |
| Nutritional value | 150 |
| Size | Small |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed | Intrinsic aggravate monster |
|
A kitten:
| |
| Reference | NetHack 3.6.7 - src/monst.c, line 349 |
A kitten, f, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The kitten is a small and carnivorous feline animal that can be seen via infravision and has a tendency to wander while moving. Kittens are domestic, and the hero can tame them by throwing any type of meat or rations at them that they can eat, and can pacify them by throwing veggy food at them.
A kitten has a single bite attack.
A hero eating a kitten corpse or tin will gain the aggravate monster intrinsic upon finishing the meal, unless they are an orc or a Caveperson.[1]
Chatting to a kitten will give various responses, depending on its tameness and condition.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.
Per commit 7817e69c, kittens and other felines have infravision.Contents
Generation
Randomly generated kittens may be created as peaceful towards neutral heroes. A kitten can grow up into a housecat.
The kitten is one of the most commonplace starting pets in NetHack:[2][3] many roles can start with a kitten as their default pet, with the exception of Cavepeople, Rangers and Samurai (who always start with a little dog) as well as the Knight (who always starts with a saddled pony).[4][5][6] The Wizard always starts with a kitten as their default pet.[7]
A tame kitten can be created via the spell of create familiar, with a default 1⁄6 chance if no preferred pet type is set.[8][9]
Strategy
As hostile monsters, kittens can be annoying or even threatening to early heroes that do not have a spare food item to throw in order to get the dog off their back—cream pies, eggs, and melons are not suitable choices, since they will splatter on the kitten's face. Veggy food such as lichen corpses will reliably pacify a hostile kitten without giving up a food source. Running across a named kitten is one of many signs that you might be on a bones level—taming them can help with sorting through bones items and even assist with the ghost of their former owner and, in certain cases, the monster that killed them.
Once a hero finds their footing and establishes a basic kit, they may want to keep a veggy food item such as an apple or pear around to pacify kittens and other domestic carnivores they do not want to fight or keep as pets—running across a named kitten is a potential sign of a bones level. Players with an interest in exotic pets may want to tame and then polymorph any kittens they encounter, e.g. by zapping a wand of polymorph.
As pets
The starting kitten that many heroes enter the dungeon with can be invaluable in the early stages of the game: they move at 18 speed and can weaken or make quick work of early hostiles while avoiding counterattacks with enough rolls in their favor. Conversely, kittens are not smart enough to avoid monsters with passive attacks, such as acid blobs or floating eyes, and starting pets are weaker than their wild counterparts within the dungeon. They are also extremely vulnerable to traps such as falling rock traps and rolling boulder traps, and many are killed by one within the first hundred turns of a game.
Chatting with a tamed kitten can provide an idea of how it is feeling.
Below is a table describing how much weight in objects a domestic carnivore at a particular stage of growth can carry, which is generally applicable for credit cloning and otherwise ripping off shopkeepers—remember that cats and dogs can only pick up a single object at a time:
| Pet type | Corpse wt | Can carry unassisted | in uncursed bag of holding | in blessed bag of holding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| kitten/little dog | 150 | 51 | 72 | 144 |
| housecat/dog | 200 / 400 | 68 / 137 | 106 / 244 | 212 / 488 |
| large cat/large dog | 250 / 800 | 1000 | 1970 | 3940 |
History
The kitten first appears in NetHack 3.0.0, where it is introduced as an alternate starting pet option to the little dog: the Caveman will always start with a little dog, the Wizard will always start with a kitten, and other roles will randomly receive one of either. NetHack 3.0.8 allows an option of either pet to be set for characters in other roles. The Samurai's default little dog is introduced in NetHack 3.1.0, while NetHack 3.3.0 adds the default little dog for Rangers and establishes the saddled pony as the Knight's starting pet.
In NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier versions, including some variants based on those versions, kittens are capable of picking up item stacks so long as that stack does not exceed their carrying capacity.
Origin
The cat (Felis catus), commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small carnivorous mammal that is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the domestication of cats date as far back as around 7500 BC in the Near East. Cats are commonly kept as house pets and farm animals, but feral cats that avoid human contact can also be found. The cat's retractable claws are adapted to killing small prey like mice and rats, and it has a strong and flexible body, quick reflexes, and sharp teeth, along with a well-developed sense of smell and night vision. Valued by humans for companionship and its ability to kill vermin, the cat is a social species, but a solitary hunter.
A juvenile cat is generally referred to as a kitten: while this applies primarily to the domestic cat, young animals of other species are also sometimes called kittens, such as rabbits, rats or badgers. After being born, kittens are fully dependent on their mothers for survival, and normally do not open their eyes for seven to ten days. After about two weeks, kittens develop quickly and begin to explore the world outside their nest. After a further three to four weeks, they begin to eat solid food and grow baby teeth. Domestic kittens are highly social animals and usually enjoy human companionship.
Messages
- <The kitten> yowls.
- Your tame kitten is caught in a trap, confused, scared, or at low tameness.[10]
- <The kitten> whimpers.
- A leashed tame kitten is near a square with a trap.[11]
- <The kitten> meows.
- A tame kitten is currently hungry.[12]
- <The kitten> mews.
- A tame kitten will become hungry in 1000 turns or less.[13]
- <The kitten> purrs.
- You chatted to a tame kitten, and none of the above conditions apply.[14]
- <The kitten> snarls.
- You chatted to a peaceful kitten.[15]
- <The kitten> growls!
- You chatted to a hostile kitten.[16]
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, kittens and their other growth stages have their frequency raised to 7, and they do not randomly generate in Gehennom. Undead Slayers have a 1⁄2 chance of a kitten serving as their starting pet.
A kitten is generated in the first map of the Mall during level creation.
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, a kitten is generated on the second map of the Town branch's shop-filled floor during level creation.
Kittens appear among the random f that are part of the second quest monster class for Cavepeople and make up 6⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated on the Caveman quest.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, kittens are chaotic and can squeeze through iron bars.
The Cartouche of the Cat Lord is a ward that can pacify hostile kittens which see it, returning them to full health if successful. The Toustefna is a stave that can scare off kittens if carved into a wood weapon placed on the hero's square.
TNNT (the game)
In TNNT (the game), the robotfindskitten special level has a kitten hidden among one of several random glyphs, which print random descriptions when the hero interacts by bumping into them—one of the TNNT achievements is obtained by finding this kitten, which generates as peaceful for heroes observing petless conduct and will otherwise be tame.
Kittens named Micka and Poes each have a 1⁄5 chance of being generated within the DevTeam Office rooms behind secret doors at level creation.
One of the TNNT achievements requires the hero's starting pet to survive to its last growth stage, e.g. the starting kitten has to become a large cat.
SlashTHEM
In addition to SLASH'EM details, SlashTHEM also includes the Town branch and the map containing the kitten.
Kittens appear among the random f that are part of the second quest monster class for Cavepeople and make up 6⁄175 (3%) of the monsters randomly generated on the Caveman quest, as in UnNetHack. They also appear among the random f that are part of the first quest monster class for Zookeepers and make up 24⁄175 (14%) of the monsters randomly generated on the Zookeeper quest.
Hack'EM
In Hack'EM, kittens and their other growth stages that can generate randomly (i.e. excluding the fat cat) have their frequency raised to 3 rather than 7, and can randomly generate in Gehennom.
As in UnNetHack, a kitten is generated on the second map used for the shop-filled floor of the Town branch during level creation, and the branch also has maps from the Mall of SLASH'EM map including the one containing the kitten.
Encyclopedia entry
Well-known quadruped domestic animal from the family of
predatory felines (_Felis ochreata domestica_), with a thick,
soft pelt; often kept as a pet. Various folklores have the
cat associated with magic and the gods of ancient Egypt.
So Ulthar went to sleep in vain anger; and when the people
awakened at dawn - behold! Every cat was back at his
accustomed hearth! Large and small, black, grey, striped,
yellow and white, none was missing. Very sleek and fat did
the cats appear, and sonorous with purring content.
References
- ↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 703
- ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 61
- ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 65
- ↑ src/role.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 211
- ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 176-L181
- ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 191
- ↑ src/role.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 558
- ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 57: pet_type()
- ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 95: make_familiar() has 1⁄3 chance of calling pet_type
- ↑ src/sounds.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 657
- ↑ src/sounds.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 432
- ↑ src/sounds.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 660
- ↑ src/sounds.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 664
- ↑ src/sounds.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 662
- ↑ src/sounds.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 668
- ↑ src/sounds.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 670
