Treecat animal husbandry

JeffEngel wrote:And when it comes to satisfying the meat need, domestication and hunting aren't either/or. They're certainly not among humans, though keeping hunting preserves and keeping farms and ranches do have some tensions. Sphinx winters are over a t-year long, and the hunting and fishing during them suck. Modest seasonal variations can make for long, hungry weeks. Whatever the treecats can do for regular meals and food storage will have some appeal. No treecat father is going to be so in love with the thrill of the hunt that he'd knowingly risk his kittens suffering that way if he could have spared them with some dull, routine tending of domestic livestock - if, when, and as it is an option.

OTOH the length of those winters makes it even harder to stockpile sufficient fodder for any hypothetical domesticated herds the treecats might be trying to maintain.

And I'm not sure how well an obligate carnivore does on salted or smoked meat. So they might not be able to do butcher their herds back to only breeding stock during a fall harvest. Even if they only have to keep the excess alive until the winter freeze has solidly set in (to allow the butchered meat to be naturally frozen) that takes a lot more harvested fodder. And if the natural freeze isn't hard or reliable enough to risk as a preservation technique, so they only slaughter as needed for consumption, then they need vastly more stockpiled fodder to feed the larger herd through the winter.


And whether you're stockpiling sufficient fodder to keep much of the herd alive through the winter, or you're stockpiling butchered meat, the mass/volume of the stored supplies makes the clan significantly less mobile should a disaster occur.

exiledtoIA wrote:I like the idea of a cat colony on Montana. It sounds like the cats and Montana's have a lot in common.

They'd either become besties of be at each others throats in no time.

If 'cats can adapt to the open plains of Montana, they should make admirable Cowboys and/or pest-controllers -- I believe there was a passing mention of a Prairie Dog analog on Montana, and rabbits would spread like they have in Australia if introduced to Montana.

Montana would provide the perfect education for 'cats in animal husbandry -- or at least a practical education in herding cattle.

Vince wrote:I'm not so sure that females don't hunt:

In Enemy Hands, Chapter 1 wrote:In the end, the apparent social dynamics of the group had done it for her. The eldest of the three had become Hera, for it was obvious that every one of the males—except, perhaps, Nimitz—deferred utterly to her authority. If she was the head of this small slice of a clan, however, the 'cat Honor had dubbed Athena was obviously her exec and general advisor. The third female, Artemis, was barely older than Samantha, but she was also the feistiest of the ladies and the one who'd taken on the task of teaching the kittens the rudiments of hunting and stalking.

Boldface is my emphasis.

Ah, thanks. Right then, amend that to females don't, as a rule, do a lot of the wide-ranging hunting.

It's important to remember variation among treecats. Valiant/Dirt Grubber didn't hunt much, farmed like some obsessed plant nerd, and ate a lot more vegetables than most treecats. Fishing is a sort of back-up hunting alternative for most treecats; for Fisher/Swift Striker, it was that much fun and the primary hunting exercise. Female treecats tend to stick to the nesting areas; find vegetables; take care of the young, old, injured, and sick; craft tools, but some of them will break out and - like Artemis - hunt. Nimitz has a sense of humor that's a bit much for more sedate treecats. And Samantha is just waiting, watching, patiently, for anyone to make any generalization that may apply to her so she can break it hard with a smile.

The treecats who are setting up offworld colonies, forming adoption bonds, or signing up for bodyguard work are all exceptions in some ways relative to the stay-at-home sorts, and the stay-at-home sorts have their own wide array of preferences, habits, skills, and economic roles. Treecat society is not remotely as sophisticated - broken down into distinct roles - as any of ours, much less the human culture of the 20th century P.D., but we can all go wrong more easily oversimplifying it than generalizing freely.

Weird Harold wrote:

exiledtoIA wrote:I like the idea of a cat colony on Montana. It sounds like the cats and Montana's have a lot in common.

They'd either become besties of be at each others throats in no time.

If 'cats can adapt to the open plains of Montana, they should make admirable Cowboys and/or pest-controllers -- I believe there was a passing mention of a Prairie Dog analog on Montana, and rabbits would spread like they have in Australia if introduced to Montana.

Montana would provide the perfect education for 'cats in animal husbandry -- or at least a practical education in herding cattle.

I don't think the 'Cats would need much to get by there. The hunting itself, as you mentioned, would be bountiful.

I could even see the ranchers potentially willing to plant groves of trees in scattered areas for the 'Cats to live in, with the understanding that the 'Cats didn't target the beef (and sought out any natural predators).

Jonathan_S wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:And when it comes to satisfying the meat need, domestication and hunting aren't either/or. They're certainly not among humans, though keeping hunting preserves and keeping farms and ranches do have some tensions. Sphinx winters are over a t-year long, and the hunting and fishing during them suck. Modest seasonal variations can make for long, hungry weeks. Whatever the treecats can do for regular meals and food storage will have some appeal. No treecat father is going to be so in love with the thrill of the hunt that he'd knowingly risk his kittens suffering that way if he could have spared them with some dull, routine tending of domestic livestock - if, when, and as it is an option.

OTOH the length of those winters makes it even harder to stockpile sufficient fodder for any hypothetical domesticated herds the treecats might be trying to maintain.

True. We're definitely not talking about cows here, and the lack of grasses on Sphinx means there isn't likely anything cow-like anyway. I'd had in mind more Sphinx's small rodent equivalents at least and flightless or at least frequently grounded birds - whatever Sphinx has like the ancestors of guinea pigs and chickens. Stockpiling seeds may be more doable than vast amounts of grains would be, and some small creature would be much more manageable for treecats but more importantly quick to mature and reproduce. That way they may be able to keep small winter herds, let them expand a lot in the warm seasons, then slaughter them down to size as winter approaches. The meat would ideally be somewhat preservable, but even if they have to eat it all, they can do so over several t-months, they can eat that in preference to seeds, nuts, etc. that they can keep over the winter, and they can fatten themselves up before getting into the lean months.

And I'm not sure how well an obligate carnivore does on salted or smoked meat. So they might not be able to do butcher their herds back to only breeding stock during a fall harvest. Even if they only have to keep the excess alive until the winter freeze has solidly set in (to allow the butchered meat to be naturally frozen) that takes a lot more harvested fodder. And if the natural freeze isn't hard or reliable enough to risk as a preservation technique, so they only slaughter as needed for consumption, then they need vastly more stockpiled fodder to feed the larger herd through the winter.

Also true. About obligate carnivores and salted meat - I'm not sure either, and Google was singularly unhelpful that way. Anyone know anything that way, beyond reasonably putting a question mark on the issue?

And whether you're stockpiling sufficient fodder to keep much of the herd alive through the winter, or you're stockpiling butchered meat, the mass/volume of the stored supplies makes the clan significantly less mobile should a disaster occur.

Well, if a disaster does occur, if it's desperate enough, you lose the herds and preserved food. But the same goes for any stockpiled plant meals, baskets, pottery, prepared nests, etc. So it's not as though they're freely mobile nomads already. And if you can keep any food, disasters based on going hungry where you are are that much less likely.

Erls wrote:Likely dedicated 'Cat colonies:

4- Bolthole (provided the planet is good). Lots of RMN officers and staff will be heading there, and what better place to seed a 'Cat colony?


Three other possibilities:


C- A Talbot planet, perhaps Montana? If the ranchers come to peace with the 'Cats, Montana might be an ideal place with its wide open lands and limited population.

Couple problems here.

Bolthole is the codename for Haven's secret shipyard/research facility. We don't know where it is and we don't really know what it is. For all we know, it could have been built in a red dwarf star system in some out of the way part of Haven or even in deep space between star systems. There's no need for a planet at all. My guess is that it's in some surveyed and ignored star system somewhere in or around Haven that has just enough raw materials in it to make it worthwhile to build something like a small shipyard or R&D facility there but economically unfeasible for exploitation by a commercial interest.

As for Montana, 'cats are arboreal. They are adapted for live in the trees. They live, eat, and sleep in the trees. Montana's known for it's ranching and for the quality of the grazing. It takes a lot of open land to raise cattle or similar animals on a commercial basis. Open plains are not going to be high on their list of places to settle. I don't remember any reference to large stands of timber or forests on Montana.

I don't know how necessary it is for 'cats to have to kill prey.

There's evidence (the passage posted previously) that stalking and proving that he still can make a successful stalk and, if necessary, kill is important to Nimitz. That was more about proving to himself that he could still do it if he needed to (and just for the thrill of the stalk and the hunt), not some drive to kill.

jtg452 wrote:Bolthole is the codename for Haven's secret shipyard/research facility. We don't know where it is and we don't really know what it is. For all we know, it could have been built in a red dwarf star system in some out of the way part of Haven or even in deep space between star systems. There's no need for a planet at all. My guess is that it's in some surveyed and ignored star system somewhere in or around Haven that has just enough raw materials in it to make it worthwhile to build something like a small shipyard or R&D facility there but economically unfeasible for exploitation by a commercial interest.

For that matter, if there's a habitable world there that anyone would want to settle without extreme duress involved, it's a place that may well have been settled, and therefore be a terrible security risk for Haven. They're not going to cut four billion people off from the universe like the Alignment and make it stick. So we can pretty well assume that Bolthole doesn't offer much in the way of a place to live beyond artificial environments. Maybe, someday, living and raising kittens in an artificial environment will be acceptable for treecats, but they'll have to be confidently and fully integrated into two-leg societies and economies first, so that would be among the last likely colony sites.

As for Montana, 'cats are arboreal. They are adapted for live in the trees. They live, eat, and sleep in the trees. Montana's known for it's ranching and for the quality of the grazing. It takes a lot of open land to raise cattle or similar animals on a commercial basis. Open plains are not going to be high on their list of places to settle. I don't remember any reference to large stands of timber or forests on Montana.

It's a big planet. It's plenty Earthlike, so we'd have to have powerful reason to suppose they don't have tough plants that grow tall and in groups before dismissing the expectation.

We can, however, suppose that Montana's ranching isn't in the very same areas where Montana's probable forests are. That may be better for treecat colonies: they would be using an otherwise under-exploited part of the surface, so as to be at a comfortable distance from most Montanan activity.

I don't know how necessary it is for 'cats to have to kill prey.

There's evidence (the passage posted previously) that stalking and proving that he still can make a successful stalk and, if necessary, kill is important to Nimitz. That was more about proving to himself that he could still do it if he needed to (and just for the thrill of the stalk and the hunt), not some drive to kill.

He did get a kick out of terrifying the critter, but then, he's got an outlier sense of humor.

It does bring up another possible couple of roles treecats can have in human society: managing vermin and capturing wild animal specimens. I'd be interested too in how well they may be able to soothe veterinary patients with teleempathic "don't worry, it'll be okay" vibes like they do for one another and bonded humans. I know at least most of that is a matter of that specific connection they have; I just don't know that the strength of it falls to strictly zero in other cases.

JeffEngel wrote:

jtg452 wrote:Bolthole is the codename for Haven's secret shipyard/research facility. We don't know where it is and we don't really know what it is. For all we know, it could have been built in a red dwarf star system in some out of the way part of Haven or even in deep space between star systems. There's no need for a planet at all. My guess is that it's in some surveyed and ignored star system somewhere in or around Haven that has just enough raw materials in it to make it worthwhile to build something like a small shipyard or R&D facility there but economically unfeasible for exploitation by a commercial interest.

For that matter, if there's a habitable world there that anyone would want to settle without extreme duress involved, it's a place that may well have been settled, and therefore be a terrible security risk for Haven. They're not going to cut four billion people off from the universe like the Alignment and make it stick. So we can pretty well assume that Bolthole doesn't offer much in the way of a place to live beyond artificial environments. Maybe, someday, living and raising kittens in an artificial environment will be acceptable for treecats, but they'll have to be confidently and fully integrated into two-leg societies and economies first, so that would be among the last likely colony sites.
[quote]

David did say once that Bolthole DID have a habitable world with a small pre-bolthole population and the economy was mostly agrarian, with no known major industrial base pre-bolthole. The planet was also NOT an official member of the post-committee PRH. This was all part of the camouflage for Bolthole. And that's about all David's said about the topic iirc.

The questions that would need to be answered in the affirmative for a 'cat colony to be likely are, IMHO:

a) Can local soils support Celery with high concentration of the critical trace elements required for full development of their empathic abilities? Failing that can (yuck!) Purple Thorn grow with such concentrations?

b) How edible/nutritious & delectable are the native prey species candidates to treecats (i.e. compatibility with Sphinxian not a Terran biology)? Failing that can Sphinxian prey-species be translocated? ... there could be subtle differences here, as we know there is between 'cat and human biology.

c) Similarly, will picket wood (or should I write net-wood?) grow in the local soils? Failing that are the local tree-equivalents (or imported trees) of a sort that forms the interconnected branch-ways the 'cats are adapted for?

d) Are the geo-(rather astro-)political indicators of the candidate world in the view of their two-legs advisers positive (or at least neutral)? Will the locals be accepting of a colony of sufficient size (likely clan at a minimum)?

JeffEngel wrote:[snip]
It's a big planet. It's plenty Earthlike, so we'd have to have powerful reason to suppose they don't have tough plants that grow tall and in groups before dismissing the expectation.

We can, however, suppose that Montana's ranching isn't in the very same areas where Montana's probable forests are. That may be better for treecat colonies: they would be using an otherwise under-exploited part of the surface, so as to be at a comfortable distance from most Montanan activity.
[snip]

hvb wrote:The questions that would need to be answered in the affirmative for a 'cat colony to be likely are, IMHO:

a) Can local soils support Celery with high concentration of the critical trace elements required for full development of their empathic abilities? Failing that can (yuck!) Purple Thorn grow with such concentrations?

Now that the relevant biochemistry (on the plant end, at least) is known, candidates other than those two plants can be manufactured or found.

Also, while I doubt any 'cat colonists would be thrilled by the idea, some of them may accept that some of the things they need will have to be acquired by trade with places that can grow them. Still, that would at least put a site way, way down on the list of attractive places to settle, and they'd need to be secure in their ability to have things to trade with the source - or, by extreme preference, sources, plural - of the vital product.

I don't have any candidates in mind for a place worth settling while accepting that kind of dependence, and like I said, it'd have to be mighty compelling. I'm just floating the possibility while insisting on its remoteness.

b) How edible/nutritious & delectable are the native prey species candidates to treecats (i.e. compatibility with Sphinxian not a Terran biology)? Failing that can Sphinxian prey-species be translocated? ... there could be subtle differences here, as we know there is between 'cat and human biology.

"Native" in this case may just mean already there, plentiful and thriving. They're settling in on Grayson of all places, where the only things they can eat are grown in orbital farms and brought down - probably already dead - or under the new domes, with thoroughly cleaned soil, entirely new, non-native plants, and entirely new, non-native animals eating the plants. So their entire presence on Grayson depends on the environments and/or resources the two-legs make available - there's no natural environment there they could survive.

It suggests to me that treecats colonizing other worlds may be willing to accept extreme changes in their lifestyle and relationship with humans, at least a large portion of them. They're not all - maybe not any - looking to recreate their traditional lives on Sphinx in other places.

c) Similarly, will picket wood (or should I write net-wood?) grow in the local soils? Failing that are the local tree-equivalents (or imported trees) of a sort that forms the interconnected branch-ways the 'cats are adapted for?

That would be nice, but they may also be willing to jump more, scamper along the ground more (especially if there aren't large predators around), and/or build bridges from tree to tree - and that's not even counting treecat colonists willing to live very differently than they did on Sphinx.

d) Are the geo-(rather astro-)political indicators of the candidate world in the view of their two-legs advisers positive (or at least neutral)? Will the locals be accepting of a colony of sufficient size (likely clan at a minimum)?

Given that their first colonies have been on Grayson and Gryphon, I think this one weighs heavily on them, much more than having an environment that lets them live like they do at home. Getting to any other world is going to take two-leg help. If living there does too, well, the treecat colonists may figure that's a price they're practically committed to paying anyway, so the important thing is going where they'll have two-leg friends willing to have them and to accept treecat labor and skills for the products of two-leg skills.