Cecil's CCL, Chapter 5

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 left-hand 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!

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.

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.

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.

The old scoring rules gave you a flat 20 points for “as much cat-themed 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.

“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.

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 cat-themed 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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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?

Allyn and Cecil are still very much in the “honeymoon” stage, as you can see.

Yes, this is picspam.

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.

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.

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!

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

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!

Plus pointsKitten born: +5 (Boomer)Skill learned - Use Toilet: +5 (Boomer)

Minus pointsNone

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: 10Total from last time: 26GRAND TOTAL: 36