Cats (Minecraft)

The Cats are major characters of the sandbox video game Minecraft. 
They are one of the optional, tamable utility mobs in the game. When tamed, they act as companions to the players, and will scare away any nearby Creepers and Phantoms. Cats are likely allies of the Villagers and Iron Golems as well, considering the fact that they spawn near villages, which by extension, repel Creepers from them.
Ocelots were added back in version 1.2.1 in 2012, making them the first tamable mob to not have any type of attacks whatsoever, playing a completely passive role. However, the tradeoff was the ability to scare off Creepers, meaning that the most infamous and destruction mob in Minecraft could be warded off with these.
Once version 1.14 was introduced in 2019, ocelots and cats were split into two separate mobs, and ocelots could no longer be tamed while the cats could. Despite this, Creepers and Phantoms are still afraid of both types of felines, and will always keep their distance from them.
==Spawning==
Since the 1.14 update, cats are often found in or near villages. They spawn roughly every minute (or 1200 in-game ticks). Similar to most mobs, they use the player's location to spawn (but still remain in villages). Cats can also spawn near witch huts. When spawning in villages, the village must have at least five claimed, with the limit of cats being four per village. Cats spawned in villages don't despawn, unless the village has extra cats over the game's limit.
Village-spawned cats spawn with a random type of fur/breed, but a full moon may spawn black cats. Cats spawning in villages and cats spawning due to how passive mobs are spawned are seperate processes that co-exist.
In the console edition of the game, a village - at fixed intervals - spawn a single cat for every owned bed in the village, up to a maximum of five cats for 20 owned beds in the a village. Cats that were not spawned by a village that wandered near said village will be counted toward the "cats in village" count the game handles. Kittens and player-tamed cats are also counted.
Witch huts in swamps also have cats spawn near them. These cats also never despawn. In the PC version of the game, cats spawned from spawn eggs or commands will always be black, regardless of the moon phase. Also exclusive to the PC version; if a cat already exists in a 16×8×16 of the witch hut, another cat will not naturally spawn.
==Personality==
Cats are often portrayed as loyal, kind, cute, friendly, passive, loving, and trustworthy creatures. These traits are most apparent when tamed and near their owners. Stray cats are simply passive and self-aware, when spawned, they wander around aimlessly. They will run away from any players if they come near. There is some tedious difficulty in players attempting to tame cats, due to stray cats constantly and speedily distancing themselves from players.
Even when untamed and neutral, cats are still passive and harmless, outside from hunting a very few amount of passive mobs.
==Behavior==
Stray cats randomly attacking chickens, rabbits and baby turtles that with 15 blocks of view. The most useful traits of cats - tamed or otherwise - will always frighten Creepers and Phantoms away, thus keeping the player safe from those two hostile mobs as long as the cat is near the player. Cats will never retaliate to anything that hits them. Due to Creepers being warded off by cats, having many of them can protect many important structures, especially ones that are player-made.
They can be tamed by being fed a raw cod or raw salmon. Due to the aforementioned behavior of stray cats always moving away from the player, this can be a tricky task. However, if the player can manage to get within 10 blocks of the cat without scaring it away while holding a raw cod or salmon, the cat may slowly approach the player, making the task of taming a bit easier. However, if the player moves too abruptly or stops holding the fish while the cat is approaching, the cat will revert to its behavior of running away.
Once cats are tamed, they will follow the player. If the player is too far, they will suddenly teleport to the player's location, making it possible for cats to reach areas that would be seemingly impossible for them to get to. Similar to tamed wolves, they can be commanded to sit and stay somewhere, and to get back up from sitting. If a player is under the "invisibility" potion effect, tamed cats will still follow them and always know exactly where they are.
Cats that are already tamed can enter "love mode" when fed a raw cod or salmon. If two tamed cats are in love mode while being near each other, they spawn in a baby kitten between them. There is a five-minute delay until a cat that has recently bred will breed again. The type of cat (that is to say, the fur color/pattern it will have) will be that of one of the parents. Two sitting cats cannot breed, but a mobile cat can breed with a sitting one, in which case the kitten's breed and owner will always match that of the mobile. The growth of kittens can be slowly accelerated using raw fish. Each use takes 10% off the remaining time to grow up.
Tamed cats have a mischievous side, as they can choose to sit on a player's bed, chest or furnace, negating the use of whichever thing the cat is sitting on. This is a deliberate choice by the developers to playfully annoy players. Though the prominent trait of cats is to frighten Creepers and Phantoms away, the cats do not make any physical gestures or attacks toward them, but will angrily hiss at nearby Phantoms pursuing the player.
== Heroic Acts==
*Scaring away Creepers and Phantoms, thus preventing the player from being harmed by them.
*They will always remain loyal to the players, much like wolves, and will stay by their side even if the players quit their worlds.
*Cats welcome their owners whenever they are back from their journeys.
*Tamed cats do perform any violent acts whatsoever, even toward the two hostile mobs they scare away.
*A tamed cat will be friendly to all the player's pets, including their pet wolves.
==Trivia==
*If a cat is named with a name tag, its name is shown in the chat when killed.
*Before 1.13 to the present version, the cats (formerly tamable from ocelots) didn't get too much attention by many players, and doesn't play a large role in the player's survival world, as jungles are very rare in the older versions. Version 1.14 changed this so that cats are now found in villages, so they're now the second most known tamable mob (first being wolves) that is loyal to the player, and will follow them wherever they want to go.
*Due to the game's lack of lore and explanations for any of the mobs' behavior, the reasoning behind Creepers and Phantoms being afraid to attack the player whenever cats and ocelots are around them is unknown. However, there are a few popular fan-made theories - though most of them pertain to only Creepers:
**One theory is that Creepers are afraid of killing or potentially harming these adorable and sweet creatures, due to Creepers having enough of a moral compass to not attack such an innocent and harmless animal, but for some reason, are more than willing to explode almost anything else, especially players.
**Another theory is that Creepers are aware of the speed and agility of cats, realizing that cats would be able to not only attack Creepers with great speed, but be quick enough to harmlessly escape their explosions as well. Phantoms could also fit into this theory.
**A third theory is the connection to Egyptian mythology, where cats were held in extremely high regard in both the real-life ancient times in Egypt, and the aforementioned mythos. This is because cats were known to protect their owners in the afterlife by scaring away evil spirits - with the Creepers and Phantoms being those spirits. What would make this theory questionable is that cats do not scare off hostile undead mobs.
**A fourth theory is one of the most simple ones, being that cats are held in very high regard to Mojang Studios, and simply because of that, they are given power over the destructive Creepers.
**A fifth theory is that Creepers are made of deformed plants in some way, and this is given strength by the game's original creator, Markus "Notch" Persson, saying that the texture of a Creeper was "crunchy, like dry leaves". Cats are known to destroy plants, mainly for catnip.
**A sixth theory is that sometime in the game's past - likely before the lifetime of the player - there were line of events that would leave Creepers and Phantoms horrified of felines.
*Cats are also one of the few mobs in the game that are completely innocent and commit no malevolent acts in any way, as they don't even attack in self-defense from the hostile mobs (alongside the Villagers and the Allay), and are considered true pacifists. However, this can be debated, due to the fact that the untamed cats attack chickens, rabbits and baby turtles.
*Cats are the only mobs in the game, that - despite it being a tamable animal - is one of the hardest to tame, as they always run away from the player that tries to tame them. This leads to players eventually trying to trap them, making the taming process easier.
*Cats spawning near witch huts is a reference to witches commonly having cats as companions in folklore and media.
==Gallery==
===Images===
mc_cat_types.jpg|A lineup of all types of cats. From left to right: tabby, tuxedo, red, siamese, British shorthair, calico, Persian, ragdoll, white, and black.
unused_tabby.png|An unused tamed gray tabby texture found in the console edition of the game.
Cats_and_kitten.png|Two cats with their newly spawned kitten.
mc_cats_bed.png|Cats being mildly annoying and sitting on the player's bed, making the bed unusable.
mc_cats_pen.png|Cats being kept in a pen, with the intent to breed more.
mc_cats_art.png|Ocelot seen in Minecraft artwork.
mc_cat_fed.png|A cat that was recently made happy by being fed a raw fish.
mc_cat_laying.png|Another cat laying on a bed.
===Merchandise===
funko-pop-games-minecraft-ocelot-318-D_NQ_NP_717019-MLA27940852793_082018-F.jpg|Ocelot's Funko Pop! 1
Funko_Minecraft_POP_Tuxedo_Cat_Vinyl_Figure_CHASE_VERSION_x700.jpg|Ocelot's Funko Pop! 2
==External links==
*Cat at the Minecraft Wiki
==Navigation==
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