Cat

Cat is a mob you keep for what it repels rather than what it fights. Taming a cat is done with raw cod or raw salmon, and the trick is to stand still holding the fish and let it come to you — walking at one makes it bolt. Each fish is a chance rather than a guarantee, so bring more than you think you need.

A tamed Cat wears a collar you can dye, teleports to you when you get far ahead, and stays put when told to sit. Sitting one on a chest blocks the chest from opening, which is worth knowing before you leave a cat in a storage room. Sleep with a tamed cat nearby and it brings gifts: some mornings it drops an item beside the bed, which is the only reliable way to see rabbit's foot and phantom membrane arrive without hunting for them.

Creepers keep their distance from cats, and phantoms avoid them too, so a couple of cats around a base is real mob-proofing rather than decoration. Wild ones live in villages, which is where to find a cat without a long search, and every swamp hut comes with a black Cat beside its witch — that black cat is the only variant tied to a fixed location.

There are eleven cat variants — tabby, tuxedo, red, siamese, british shorthair, calico, persian, ragdoll, white, jellie and black — and a village rolls a random one for each cat that spawns, so collecting cat breeds means visiting several villages rather than breeding for them. Breeding two tamed cats with raw fish gives a kitten that copies one parent's coat, which is how you multiply a variant you already have.