Falloutfans are arguing whether cats are supposed to be extinct in the game’s universe as claimed by Mr House inNew Vegas, or if he’s just completely wrong.
Throughout the Fallout series, we’ve seen all kinds of monsters and mutants born from the effects of radiation, from Super Mutants to Deathclaws. We’ve also seen some animals somehow survive the apocalypse, like dogs, fish, and birds, but there’s another animal that has a bit more debate surrounding it - cats.
At first, this argument seems like an easy one to debunk. Cats were mentioned in the first two Fallout games and seemed to be alive and well, something that is backed up by dogs somehow having survived and not being affected by the radiation.Things took a turn for the weird in Fallout: New Vegas, however, as Mr House will tell the player that cats have gone extinctafter using the phrase “there’s more than one way to skin a cat”.
That would seem to suggest that cats don’t exist in the Fallout universe, or at least Bethesda’s version of it, but then they were shown pretty frequently as pets in Fallout 4, suggesting that Mr House is just wrong on the matter and somehow doesn’t know they’re still around. The guy clearly doesn’t get out that much.
Despite this seeming like a pretty clear cut case of Mr House being wrong and cats still being a common thing in the Fallout universe, fans to this day argue that Fallout 4 has broken canon by showing them and that New Vegas is the one game that’s right. Despite that being such a long-standing debate, it’s one that’s been brought up again over on the Fallout subreddit.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes. Or went, that is - cats being extinct.
The argument was raised by Redditor Pixlethegreat, who asked why some fans think Fallout 4 is breaking canon for adding cats instead of the simple answer that Mr House is just wrong and didn’t know it. The arguments include that some characters aren’t telling the truth, that Fallout New Vegas takes place in a whole other area to the rest of the series where cats might actually be extinct, and the golden rule - that New Vegas is held up as the best game in the series and couldn’t be wrong.
Although I’m sure there are still some Fallout fans who believe that Mr House is right and that Fallout 4, as nitpicked as it is, is wrong, but in this case it seems to be pretty clear that catsaren’textinct in Fallout and never have been. At the very least, they’re not around in the Mojave Wasteland.
