The Basement Cat was the mascot of the Basement BBS. The Basement Cat was the nickname of the SysOP's family cat named Jazz. Jazz spent a good amount of his later years in the Basement where the BBS was located.
The Basement BBS was originally online from 1986 through 1998. Jazz lived through most of this time, as he was born in 1975 and lived until 1993; a whopping 18 years! When Jazz passed away, AJ, the SysOp's mom, posted the following obituary on the BBS:
At approximately 9:15am, March 1, 1993 Jazz, the Basement Cat, joined the big BBS in the sky. Jazz lived a long life having been born in March of 1975. Jazz was a long haired black and white cat who was named after a cat at the Cleveland Free Clinic. He saw many acquaintances come and go such as "bird", "fish", Fred (the Ferret), and Frances (the Ferret).
Before retiring to the Basement, Jazz was a successful hunter. In his retirement years, he enjoyed walking on the BBS' computer keyboard to get to the warmth of the computer's hard drives. We can only hope that he is walking on the great keyboard in the sky!
Jazz, we miss you.
Send email.
-AJ
As one can guess, Jazz had a tendency of disrupting online users when he walked on the BBS' keyboard. This disruption was captured by Basement BBS user, Phil Shepley (a.k.a. Captain Psycho), in the following ATASCII slide show:
Phil also designed some BBS title screens that featured the Basement Cat. Below is one of them:
