Housecat
f housecat 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 5 |
| Attacks |
Bite 1d6 |
| Base level | 4 |
| Base experience | 44 |
| Speed | 16 |
| Base AC | 5 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 200 |
| Nutritional value | 200 |
| Size | Small |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed | Intrinsic aggravate monster |
|
A housecat:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line351 |
A housecat, f, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is a small and carnivorous domestic feline that can be seen via infravision. Housecats can be tamed by throwing them any type of meat or rations that they can eat, and can be pacified by throwing veggy food at them.
A housecat has a single bite attack.
Eating a housecat corpse or tin will confer the aggravate monster intrinsic, unless you are an orcish character or a Caveman.
Chatting to a housecat will give various responses, depending on its tameness and condition.
Contents
Generation
Randomly generated housecats may generate as peaceful towards neutral characters. A kitten can grow up into a housecat, and a housecat can grow up into a large cat.
A quantum mechanic has a 1⁄20 chance of being generated with a large box:[1] the box has a 1⁄2 chance of generating a peaceful housecat with the name "Schroedinger's Cat" upon opening it if there is room on the level, and will otherwise contain a housecat corpse named "Schroedinger's Cat". The state of the cat within the box is not determined until the box is opened, and both the cat and corpse are otherwise completely normal - see the article for more specific information.
Strategy
As hostile monsters, housecats can be annoying or even threatening to early characters that lack suitable spare food item to pacify them with: remember that cream pies, eggs and melons will splatter on their face. Veggy food such as lichen corpses will reliably pacify a hostile housecat without giving up a food source.
Once a character 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 housecats and other domestic carnivores they do not want to fight or keep as pets - a named housecat is a likely sign that a bones level is present. Housecats may also be sought out to polymorph by players interested in exotic pets.
As pets
Chatting with a tamed housecat 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 housecat first appears in NetHack 3.0.0.
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.
Cat communication includes vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, and grunting as well as cat body language. It can hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears, such as those made by small mammals. Domestic cats are bred and shown at events as registered pedigreed cats, a hobby known as cat fancy. Animal population control of cats may be achieved by spaying and neutering, but their proliferation and the abandonment of pets has resulted in large numbers of feral cats worldwide, contributing to the extinction of bird, mammal, and reptile species.
As of 2017, the domestic cat was the second most popular pet in the United States, with 95.6 million cats owned and around 42 million households owning at least one cat. In the United Kingdom, 26% of adults have a cat, with an estimated population of 10.9 million pet cats as of 2020. As of 2021, there were an estimated 220 million owned and 480 million stray cats in the world.
Messages
- <The housecat> yowls.
- You chatted to a tame housecat that is caught in a trap, confused, scared, or at low tameness.[2]
- <The housecat> whimpers.
- A leashed tame housecat is near a square with a trap.[3]
- <The housecat> meows.
- You chatted to a tame housecat that is currently hungry.[4]
- <The housecat> purrs.
- You chatted to a tame housecat that will become hungry in 1000 turns or less.[5]
- <The housecat> snarls.
- You chatted to a peaceful housecat.[6]
- <The housecat> growls!
- You chatted to a hostile housecat.[7]
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, housecats and their other growth stages have their frequency raised to 7. They also do not randomly generate in Gehennom.
All of the above information also applies to SlashTHEM.
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, housecats 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.
SlashTHEM
In SlashTHEM, in addition to SLASH'EM details, housecats 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. Housecats 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, housecats 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 - all other SLASH'EM details apply.
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/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 744: this applies to the entire monster class, but the quantum mechanic is currently the sole monster
- ↑ 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 662
- ↑ src/sounds.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 668
- ↑ src/sounds.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 670
