Cecil's CCL, Chapter 6

Hello! Welcome back to the Challenge that has cats, cats, and more cats! I’m sure you remember the storyline, but just in case, I’ll recap: Cecil likes cats. Recently, he married Allyn, who also likes cats. They have five cats: Atropos, Clotho, Lachesis, Andy, and Boomer.

There, now you’re up to speed! Onward!

We open with this awesomely cute picture of Boomer and one of his relatives. Unfortunately, I cannot use this for one of the official cat portraits. Even more unfortunately, showing of this picture has cost me five whole points.

+9 Individual portrait of each cat somewhere on the lot (painting, snapshot, artist's camera, architect's table, etc.)

-5 If you the player can't tell the adult cats apart

I think you can agree that the point loss is worth it, though. So cute!

As I’m sure you recall, this challenge requires you to prioritize cats over sims, so if your cat wants a scratch behind the ears and your husband wants to kiss you romantically and whisper sweet nothings in your ear, the choice is obvious.

Scratch behind the ears it is.

Allyn spent quite a bit of time helping Clotho learn to Shake this rotation, since that was the skill she needed for that last promotion.

And all that hard work paid off, even if Clotho would disagree. This makes the fourth career topped and another five points for me.

+5 Each career topped by a cat

I was doing pretty well on the clothing points, too. Both Cecil and Allyn had cat-themed clothing in every category including underwear.

+1 for every category in which Sim has cat-themed clothing (Everyday, Pajamas, etc.)

And then Cecil aged up.

There is nothing cat-themed out there for Elder males. Nothing.

Well, so much for those points.

After his age transition, Cecil went out to steal back the family’s nifty cat-themed garden gnome.

I’m not sure when it went missing, to be honest. Last I remember it being stolen was by Cecil’s mother quite some time ago, but that was in a completely different neighborhood (thanks to a rebuild), so I really doubt that’s where he went.

But wouldn’t it be kind of awesome if it was?

On his way home, Cecil was distracted by one of the trees catching on fire, and I had to forcibly prevent him from setting himself on fire in his panic. (It’s happened to me before.)

Seriously, does nobody teach these sims anything? I mean, by the time I was seven I knew the rules if there was a fire: Get Out. Don’t go back for anything or anyone, just get out and go to the meeting spot.

Interesting tidbit: While Cecil was making himself lunch, I saw one of the cats sit down and look at him quite purposefully. I figured the cat wanted to interact with Cecil, but nothing showed up in his queue, so I checked on the cat to see what the heck it was doing. The answer?

A picture of the meal Cecil was making and the interaction “Watch.”

Did you know cats like watching Sims cook? Neither did I!

Now, in between that picture and this one, I had yet another rebuild. (That’s two in the same calendar year, if you were counting.) I took advantage of the fact to clear out a crapton of my cc, but I had to rebuild 100% from scratch, including using clones, because just yanking the cc I didn’t want anymore would cause corruption and anyway some of the cc that couldn’t just be yanked was incompatible with Apartment Life, which I now have.

Only six years behind the curve – go me!

That means that certain kitties need to be retrained – Praised for Playing Nicely With Others and Scolded for Destroying The Furniture.

Anyway, the point is that in between the old game and the new, I found this nifty outfit that I think is tiger striped and therefore cat-themed. Do you think it’s tiger striped?

If not, I still have the leopard skin zip-up sweatshirt from two pictures ago and can dress Cecil in that instead.

Now, in between the first day of the rotation and the third day of the rotation, I somehow managed to turn Fraps (my screenshot program) off, which means that all the pictures I thought I was taking were not, in fact, taken. Whoops.

However, you can be sure that Cecil took good care of the kitties.

Oh, and he spent time with his wife too.

Both Cecil and Allyn spent plenty of time skilling the cats back up, since you can’t just restore skills with one click for pets. And during retraining, I came across a situation I hadn’t accounted for.

Here you can see that Cecil is teaching, er, Clotho? (Crap! -5 points right there!) Teaching Clotho (maybe) to Speak. This is not an autonomous action (which should be canceled when a cat wants attention), but it is an action involving a cat (which should not). In the background, and in Cecil’s queue, you can see that Atropos would like a hug.

What to do now?

Time for a new rule!

Rule 3c: If your sim is engaged in a non-autonomous action with a cat (that is, something that you told the sim to do) and a different cat autonomously decides to interact with your sim, you must cancel the non-autonomous interaction to allow the autonomous one.

Even if the initiating cat gets bored and wanders off before the action properly cancels.

Which they probably will because that is how cats work.

Allyn, meanwhile, spent her time teach Boomer to Use Toilet.

Have you ever watched a sim try to teach a cat to use the toilet? It’s pretty funny. They call the cat over, point into the toilet bowl emphatically, sit down and make water noises, stand back up, and point to the flush handle. Over and over and over.

Boomer is considering the situation, at least.

And there’s me out of pictures I can fit into a logical sequence. Until next time, Happy Simming!

Plus points

+5 Career topped by a cat

Minus points

-5 Unable to tell adult cats apart x 2 separate occasions = -10

Total: -5

Total from last time: 36

GRAND TOTAL: 31