I've never known it like this, and I've been coming since the last millennium... Just the last few weeks. And it varies from day to day.

Often enough it's been that the Cat goes down, and you wait a day or so and it's back, but now it's different. The front page opens up, after some delay, but the threads just hang and hang and hang. I've left it half an hour or more doing something else and then given up. Or if a thread opens and you put in a post the same thing may happen. If you're lucky it's just waits of five or ten minutes.

It had better get fixed before long, or I'm afraid it will be curtains for the Mudcat. Which would be tragic.