About Version 2.0
Post revising some of my previous work such as Riverside Shack, Millwater Retreat and Mörskom Estate, for the most part rebuilding them from the ground up, I returned to A Cat's Life. This is a mod I originally created for me as I wanted cats in my game but found the existing mods out there lacking in features and overall polish. The result was creating this mod and it quickly turned into a much larger project than I had initially anticipated.
A Cat's Life was quite the success, being featured on TheGamer news site and accumulating over 40,000 unique downloads at the time of this article. That's amazing and I clearly underestimated how much people LOVE cats. My original plan here was to fix a few remaining issues and give the mod a bit of polish. What actually happened is that I decided to re-script the mod from the ground up providing a much more lightweight system but still offering the same feature set and modularity as before.
On top of making everything fit into the world of Skyrim a little more seamlessly, I also added some additional new features, all of which you can see in the new trailer.
The Caveat
Unfortunately, as with any mod revision of this scale, it's impossible to rescript and update the mod's backbone without making it incompatible with the previous version. This means that if you use version 1.2 or lower with an existing character / save game, you will not be able to perform a simple update to the new version for that character / save game. New characters or save games without A Cat's Life installed will be perfectly fine. You can just install ACL 2.0 and away you go.
One option for characters / save games running ACL 1.2 is to dismiss all your cats, disable the needs system if active, save your game and then uninstall the mod. Load your save without A Cat's life and save it. Now install the new version, load your game and get your cats back. However, I do not take any responsibility for you breaking saves as this method comes with a strong warning. Make sure you know what you are doing and use save cleaner utilities where you can when removing mods mid-game.
What's new?
As mentioned, the mod has been rescripted, making it far more efficient and easier to maintain. One large change was to remove the courier's immediate appearance each time you load with a new character. If you still want to see the courier deliver Melvin's letter, enable the option in the MCM and he will find you.
In regards to new features, the key one is Cat Napping. As if some elements of this mod were not dark enough, you can now steal owned cats around the world by crouching behind them with a cat napping bag and activating them. Be careful though as you can get caught doing this even when you think nobody is watching and you will receive a bounty in the relevant hold.
Where's the Changelog?
There isn't one. The reason for there being no changelog is because it was becoming impossible to keep track of all the changes occurring whilst literally tearing everything apart and keeping the focus on rebuilding it without losing functionality. For all intent and purposes, this is not the same mod and isn't compatible with the old. The trailer however should give you some indication of the most notable changes from a player's perspective.