Do you know when this series started? Seems it goes back quite some years.

Indeed! I’m currently translating stuff from about 6 years ago. The first chapter of the series was posted in June of 2015. I have a very, very long way to go before I can hope to catch up. However, 2015 wasn’t actually the start of the story itself!

As early as 2011 R.C posted some monochrome strips titled something like “The Unofficial History of the Dali Court”. There was no cat yet, but most of the characters are quite recognizable:

I haven’t actually read it, but I think the blond guy from the picture above will later become Li Bing.

That story was finished, from what I gathered, at 159 chapters back in 2011, though I think you can only read it on weibo these days. Looks like at some point in 2015 or maybe end of 2014 she was approached about the making of the donghua, a new title was decided and R.C started posting comic chapters. Unfortunately, looking up the relevant weibo posts of the transition period is hard, since there are many unrelated posts and until the title was decided there was no common hashtag…

(Sorry for the long answer, apparently, I’m incapable of being concise)