1. Hello! Are you ready for pictures of cats?
I can’t hear you! Are you ready for pictures of cats?
That’s better. Now, I should probably mention before we get
started that I have a new picture-taking technique, and it means that
sometimes you can see a Sim’s (or a cat’s) queue in the upper lefthand corner of the screen. I do apologize for that, and it shouldn’t
happen very often in the future.
Also, there have been some slight tweaks to the scoring. Stay tuned
for more details!

2. Now, as you probably have forgotten from the last chapter, Cecil
had a small kitchen fire, and the firefighter was a woman named
Allyn Thayer, who mentioned that she had cats. Since Cecil is
rather lonely, and since most of his friends can only put up with so
much cat talk, he looked her up in the phone book.
CECIL: Hi, is this Allyn Thayer?
CECIL: Hi, you probably don’t remember me, but we met the other
day? Uh, I’m the guy who has four cats? With the cat sweatshirt?
Sure enough, Allyn Thayer didn’t remember him.

3. But as it turned out, she was perfectly happy to talk with him about
cats anyway, for hours. Cecil had a lovely conversation, received
an invitation to call any time with more stories of the kitties, and
went around in a very good mood for the rest of the day.
He may even have hummed.

4. The loss of Cecil’s father put rather a damper on the mood. Sure,
he inherited money, but that doesn’t make up for the loss of a
parent.
What it does do is allow you to redecorate, which is a (very
awkward) way to segue into the scoring changes.

5. The old scoring rules gave you a flat 20 points for “as much catthemed décor as you can fit in the house/stand to look at without
throwing up.” The new scoring rules give you the potential for
many more points:
+1 for every cat-themed item used from Buy mode
Recolors of the same item (for instance, the Lucky Cat statue) do
not give you additional points unless you are playing with no cc.
Since I have cc, I get four points for the items you can see in this
picture: one each for the couch, curtains, stereo, and carpet.

6. “But esme!” (I hear you cry) “That carpet comes from Build mode,
not Buy mode!” And of course you are correct.
+1 for every different cat-themed item used from Build mode
In this case, different colors of wallpaper with a cat pattern would
count separately, since you can’t change them with the design tool.
In this picture, I get seven points for the following: large picture,
decorative plates, doormat, red wallpaper, blue wallpaper, Lucky
Cat statue, other cat statue.

7. Now it’s your turn: How many points is this kitchen worth?
Did you say “four”? Then congratulations: you are correct! One
point each for the wallpaper, the linoleum, the wall calendar, and
the large painting.
+1 for using a cat-themed item from every sub-category within a
particular Build/Buy category. (For instance, if you added a catthemed toilet and a cat-themed sink and a cat-themed shower and
a cat-themed hot tub, you could take this point, since there is one
object for every sub-category under "Plumbing.")
I can’t take this bonus just now, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

8. An amusing little thing that happened during this rotation: While
Cecil was teaching Andy the next skill he needed for promotion,
Cecil’s mother came along and decided to steal the gnome.
I’m afraid that I don’t remember what the skill was that Cecil was
trying to teach.

9. Andy rather strongly disapproved of the theft, and did not scruple
to let Buttercup know just what he thought!
The gnome, by the way, is a cute cat-in-a-false-beard converted
from TS3 by amovitamsims, and can be found at their LJ.

10. Cecil managed to make good enough friends with Allyn Thayer
over the phone that she was willing to come over for a visit.
You will probably notice that the Allyn Thayer that Cecil is
greeting so enthusiastically is a generically pretty Face One sim.
The Allyn Thayer who put out the kitchen fire was… not
generically pretty.
I guess that would explain why this Allyn didn’t remember meeting
him, then, wouldn’t it?

11. But three bolts is three bolts, and you can’t argue with three bolts.

12. And to be perfectly honest, neither Allyn nor Cecil wanted to, so in
Allyn moved.

13. Now, as this slightly out-of-sequence screenshot shows, Allyn is
subject to the same rules as Cecil.
Rule #3: The cats are the most important things on the lot. If a
cat wants to interact with a Sim, the Sim must stop what
they're doing to enable the interaction.
So that shower she’s looking forward to? Not happening.
Also note that the ratio of cats to sims is more than two-to-one.

14. In fact, with the birth of Boomer, the ratio became 2.5:1, which is a
very nice ratio indeed. Should Cecil and Allyn ever have a baby,
we would need to get at least one more cat, but I’m not currently
planning on letting them have any kids. Cecil was a twin, and his
grandmother was a twin, and her father was a twin, and so was his
father. They run in the family, is what I’m saying, and I don’t want
to run up against Rule #1a.
Rule #1a: If your Sim gets married and has twins, too bad. You
have to put one of the kids up for adoption. … Alternatively,
your Sim could divorce their spouse.

15. Since that was not a very good picture of Boomer last slide, here is
a much better one, without the freaky see-through-teeth thing going
on.
And the little fella has boosted not only the cuteness factor of the
household, but also my score!
+5 Each kitten born on the lot

16. Allyn has gotten a cat-friendly makeover, with a shirt from the
same set as Cecil’s and adorable kitty cat earrings converted from
TS3 by TheNinthWave. Under the new system, this also nets me a
few points.
+1 for every category in which Sim has cat-themed clothing
(Everyday, Pajamas, etc.)
+1 for having cat-themed accessories (whether categorized as
glasses, as Bon Voyage jewelry, or both)
“Cat-themed” is a fairly loose term here just as it is in decorating:
leopard and tiger print things count.

17. I am saddened to report that Cecil’s cat-hating, gnome-stealing
mother passed on at the end of the first rotation. (I really am -- she
was a fun Sim to play). Cecil was saddened as well, and it turned
his thoughts in a particular direction.
CECIL: Allyn, I -- I don’t want to lose you.
ALLYN (inquisitively): How would you manage that? I’m a bit too
big to drop down behind the sofa.
CECIL: No, I mean I don’t want you do go anywhere.
ALLYN: Well, I don’t have any plans to move out.
CECIL: No, I mean… Look, will you marry me?
ALLYN: Sure.

18. Allyn Thayer is now Allyn Shankel. Partly because she is younger,
and the younger takes the name of the elder in my ’hood, and partly
because I’m going to need to have a friend extract Sims for a
rebuild, and I didn’t want to end up with the wrong Allyn Thayer.
(Cecil’s not the only one who can make that mistake, you know.)

19. And it was at this point that the rebuild occurred. joandsarah77
kindly extracted all my Sims for me, and I cloned them before
recreating them in CAS. Cats, however, can’t be cloned.
But never fear! Clotho, Atropos, Lachesis and Boomer are all quite
safe and sound in the new ’hood.

20. To make that work, I registered the breed for Boomer (breed name:
Boomer) and the other three cats (breed name: Clone Kitty), which
meant that they were available to select in the Create-A-Pet screen.
A few notes on personality, and voila! The cats were back.
I was unable to restore any of their skill points, because I don’t
know of any way to do that for animals, so they will all need to be
Scolded, Praised, and Taught Commands all over again. Also,
since Clotho, Atropos, and Lachesis were all exact clones (the only
difference was that Atropos was male), I took the opportunity to
mix things up a little bit by changing one personality point in each
cat. I don’t remember what I changed, but it should make the game
a bit more interesting.

21. The other thing I could not restore were Louis and Cher’s proper
graves. I couldn’t fit them in the household with the new kitties,
and I don’t know of any way to add a pet and then promptly kill
them off. (Which is the method I will be using for a different
challenge household that requires inhabited urns.) So instead, I put
these placeholder tombstones on the lot.
The tombstones are converted from TS3 by hafiseazile, and can be
found at their LJ.

22. At noon on the first day in the new ’hood, a group of neighbors
came by, ostensibly to welcome Cecil and Allyn to the ’hood, but I
thin that we know the real reason they came over, don’t we?
Kitties to play with!

23. But even with the rebuild, some things don’t change. Cecil spent a
good chunk of his first night as a (newly-rebuilt) married man on
the couch.

24. Not, I hasten to add, because Allyn was mad at him, but because
his spot was taken.
Rule #6. Your Sim may not shoo a cat off of a piece of furniture
they want to use. They can always sleep on the floor, as long as
the cat's comfortable.

25. I did make a bit of a boo-boo when designing the house, namely
that the placement of this food dish meant that Boomer was trapped
behind it -- even though in real life, he could step around it very
easily. It’s very difficult to fit in a bed, a scratching post, and a cat
condo for every cat. I’m thinking that perhaps it could be changed
to either a condo or a scratching post and a bed? The big thing
that’s stopping me is that I have never seen a cat sleep on the cat
condo. Has anyone else?

26. Allyn and Cecil are still very much in the “honeymoon” stage, as
you can see.
Yes, this is picspam.

27. But despite the sheer awesomeness of getting to spend all day
every day with kitties (and with a guy who’s really pretty okay, and
who likes cats even more than you do), Allyn was not entirely
content. Before she moved in, she was a doctor working in a
prestigious clinic. Now, of course, she can’t do that.
Rule #4: Your Sim can never have a job, but the cats can have
as many jobs as you would like.

28. After some thought, I decided to let her use Monique’s hacked
computer (as updated by Chaavick on insiminator.org) to let her
blog for money. Fun fact: I specifically downloaded the computer
to make up for the Free Time blog-for-money functionality that I
don’t have.
Rule #4a: Any form of at-home income -- novels, digging for
treasure, painting, stock tips, etc. -- is allowed, as long as the
Sim stops what they're doing when a cat wants to interact with
them.

29. I learned something on the last day of the second rotation: Cats
really can sleep on the cat condo! (In the roughly six years I have
had Pets, I have never seen this behavior.) This leads me to a slight
tweak in the scoring.
+9 Each cat has its own "stuff" (bed, food bowl, litterbox,
scratching post, toy mousie, and bird-on-a-stick; a cat condo
counts as a combined bed/scratching post)
That will definitely help with space!

30. Cecil and Allyn helped multiple kitties work on multiple skills, but
only one kitty actually completed their training. On the other hand,
it was the skill that provided the most points.
+5 Each cat that learns Use Toilet

31. And last but not least, Cecil keeps rolling a moderately disquieting
Want. It tends to go away after another Want is fulfilled, but then
he rolls it again in the morning. Allyn has not rolled a matching
Want, and of course there’s always Rule 1a to contend with.
What do you, the loyal readers, think I should do if this Want
shows up again?
Until next time, Happy Simming!

32. Plus points
Kitten born: +5 (Boomer)
Skill learned - Use Toilet: +5 (Boomer)
Minus points
None
I’m not going to add in the décor points (or the clothing points)
until the end of the challenge, since I’m constantly redecorating.
Total: 10
Total from last time: 26
GRAND TOTAL: 36