Nonono, alcohol tolerance is a function of the creature's weight, and it works perfectly.

The problem was the amount of alcohol that would get transferred on their paws when walking on spilled booze. If the alcohol was spilled from a mug, then the game would place the equivalent of a full mug of booze on each paw, which would then be ingested when the cat cleaned them.

Four full mugs of beer would be more than enough to waste anything the size of a cat.

Jesus, I need to read that source code.

The kicker is, everything you mentioned is intended behavior.

• animals wander around (maybe implemented just to make things more lively)
• creatures get splattered with whatever liquids are splashing around (perhaps initially implemented to have dwarfs get splattered with blood on a kill or to have things gradually get wet close to a waterfall)
• animals clean themselves, licking off whatever dirt there is

All these mechanics just naturally interact, by virtue of being implemented in a generic way, which allows for this amazing emergent behavior.
IIRC the bug was that the amount of booze ingested by the cats during cleaning wasn't scaled correctly to how much splatter they received or should've. Either way they ended up with excessive amounts of alcohol and overdosed immediately.

My favorite was groundhogs biteing with their faces. Not their mouthes, their entire faces.

They would bite a lion I'm half.

I'm going from memory, and can't find a link.