Wily cat

A wily cat is a special variant of a pet cat which players gain access to by completing Ratcatchers. After completion, players can speak to Felkrash to have her train their overgrown cat into a wily cat. (Warning: after training your overgrown cat to be a wily cat, you will start from zero for the number of rats caught for the cat training medal.) Wily cats are the best hunters of any cat, and in addition to a better rate of catching rats than other cats, they can also catch kalphite larvae and butterflies, though this yields no experience in Hunter for the player. Wily cats do not require food of any kind.

After a random amount of time, usually around 20 minutes, regardless of the amount of interactions performed, a wily cat will become a lazy cat. Lazy cats can only catch rats, and have the success rate of a normal cat. They can be trained back into wily cats by performing approximately 50 interactions with them. The easiest way to accomplish this is to use the mouse toy, which players can equip, then right click and select "play" repeatedly. Other options are to play with it with a ball of wool, sending it to chase rats, and stroking it.

While wily cats do not need attention like kittens do, the amount of attention they have received influences the dialogue when the wily cat is spoken to. When asked how it is doing, an angry cat will hiss and complain that it hasn't been petted enough. Once it has been petted enough, it will say that it is content, but wants to hunt more rats. Once that need is satisfied, it will purr and say it is happy, but that the player shouldn't take this as a sign to start neglecting it again. There is no benefit to a fully contented wily cat.

Wily and lazy cats can be named by speaking with Felkrash. The name can be a combination of any six letters or spaces, but no numbers. The name input will appear in the follower detail window instead of the follower name. The name will be used for every cat the player has, even kittens, adult cats, and overgrown cats. Players are only allowed to have one wily or lazy cat at a time, in addition to one kitten or adult cat, and as many overgrown cats as they wish. Players can store both lazy and wily cats in their menageries. Wily cats will not become lazy while in a menagerie.

Like normal cats, wily and lazy cats can be turned into a hellcat after starting the Freeing Evil Dave sub-quest of Recipe for Disaster and capturing 7 Hell-Rats in his mother's basement. They can also be turned into a purple cat by doing the Purple Cat miniquest unlocked after completing Swept Away. A wily or lazy hellcat can be turned back to normal by feeding it milk, however players cannot turn a purple wily or lazy cat back to normal. Changing a wily or lazy cat into a hell or purple cat has no effect except appearances and dialogue.

Trivia

 * When players put a wily cat into their menagerie, they receive the message "Your wily cat jumps into the pet house." instead of the normal "Your pet clambers into the pet house." and when they take it out, they receive the message "Your wily cat jumps out of the menagerie!" instead of the normal "You take your pet out of the menagerie." Likewise, when putting a lazy cat into their menagerie, they receive the message "Your lazy cat flops into the pet house.", and when they take it out, they receive "You wake your lazy cat up, and take it out of the menagerie... ...and it falls asleep again in your pack."
 * Strangely if you take your wily cat to talk to Fluffs, its attitude will change completely and talk nicely to its Mother. This could be because Fluffs is its Mother.
 * It appears that the Chat Filter does not affect cat names. It is unknown whether this was a glitch or it is intentional.

Wily cat