Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48763
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48763
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

The best bet you have is looking directly at the source material - e.g., real felines fighting. Of course it would help narrowing down to one species (the domestic cat is very different, in terms of survival instincts, from the african lion). If you lived with a couple of cats, you should have a good idea of how they fight and how they spar. If you don't, well, luckily the internet obsession with felines should come in handy (go check youtube).

What traits of feline behaviour should come over to your "neko" character is ultimately up to you and to your worldbuilding. From where your neko people come from? What are their survival habits - e.g., how did they live before becoming fully sentient, self aware beings? In what way their anatomy is different from the regular human?

E.g. us humans come from apes, and apes are highly social animals. As a result, the early hominids lived and hunted in groups, and still now, a human (homo sapiens sapiens) being suffers without a "pack" - ergo someone to form social bonds with. Of course, now we call it family and friends, but our society evolved from the basic need of sharing our life with someone similar to us.

So, your neko people might undergo similar or totally different paths. This influences the fighting as well: sometimes packs of female lions hunt together, while other felines hunt alone. This will influence the fighting style - a lone cat has to secure the kill by himself, while a group can be more "specialized".

Another thing is: make the anatomy of your cat people make sense (as much as it's possible). If they are humans with tails and ears, don't make them fight and run on all fours! The human anatomy is not made for squatting down, less so for running like an animal. It would be different if, for example, your neko people would have longer or differently developed legs.

You could take this the other way around, deciding which traits you want and then working backwards to get a reasonable worldbuilding explanation for it.

My two cents:

- Make your cat people go for the throat. It's an universal weak spot and who manages to hit it first basically wins. In a fight, you'll often see felines jumping at each other throaths - in order to deal damage or just assert dominance. In the same way, big cats like lions (who can deal a lot of damage with their claws) usually rely on their bite to strike the killing blow on their prey.
- Avoid anything that's bigger than you, kill everything that's smaller - pretty much the domestic cat way of life.

Original score: 2