BCE stands for Best Cats Ever. Alex has been inducted.

This morning clinched it. I was feeling down, outcast, and unfairly criticized, as I have often felt in my life, with or without reason. Let me assure you that if those feelings have no reason, the last thing that works is trying to convince me they have no reason. Basically I need reassurance and a hug. It was hard to get the humans to understand what was bothering me. Well, I'll bet any amount of money that Alex didn't understand either, but he didn't care if it made sense or not. All that mattered to him was, Mommy doesn't look very happy. She needs cheering up. So he jumped into my lap and gave me kiss after kiss after kiss. He didn't try to reason me out of my moodiness. He just loved me unconditionally as only God or an animal can do. We had a committe meeting, my husband and daughter and I, and we unanimously voted him in. He is a bit young for the honor, just turned 5 years old, but other members of this exclusive club were young too.

Alex joins the only other living member of the club, Tiger. In her roughly 11 or 12 years on this planet, she has gone from fur-and-bones starving stray to big fat roly-poly foster mom. She had already been spayed when Mike's grandmother found her, and as young as she probably was at that time, it's safe to guess she has never been a biological mother. But she has adopted and raised a number of kittens over the years, including our Paisley. She is very patient with kittens, and and as such, even though she is shy with most humans, she is the fastest of our cats to adjust to my grandchildren. She simply treats them as human kittens. When she is not mothering young both feline and human, she spends her time sitting alongside one of us on the couch, purring, and petting us with her paws just as we pet her. She is too old and fat to jump up on the furniture anymore, but we are happy to lift her so that she can sit with us. After her lifetime of giving love, she has earned it.

One-year-old Paisley is not yet of BCE caliber, but at the rate she is going, she'll get there. She has been coached by the best. Tiger taught her to be a cat, but Tuffy taught her to be Daddy's girl. That's how Tuffy spent the last decade of her life. After her first owner died, Tuffy worked in a flooring store as a mascot until Mike adopted her. From that point on, wherever Mike went, Tuffy followed. Where Mike sat, Tuffy was his lap companion. When Mike slept, Tuffy curled up on his hip and slept too. All Mike would have to say was, "I have to turn over now, Tuffy," and Tuffy would shift her position, let him turn, and re-settle herself. They were inseparable. When the time came for Tuffy to follow her first owner, it left a major hole in our home. Paisley has big paws to fill, but she is doing her best.

The BCE club would not be complete without Jason. He had the biggest teeth and claws I'd ever seen on a domestic cat, but would use them on nobody, not even other cats. And Jason has something in common with all of the other members of BCE, whether current or potential. Although male, he did as Tiger does, and fostered kittens. Like Paisley, he had been raised by humans. While his mother had not died, she had rejected him as the runt, requiring human intervention to save his young life. My daughter even taught him to purr by holding him to her throat and humming. Those purring lessons paid off. His purr could be heard from the other end of the house. Like Tuffy, he was a lap ornament who loved following his humans everywhere, and also like Tuffy, he was a black cat. Like Freddi, he met with a sad end--we lost him mysteriously around Halloween, and that is the reason we didn't allow Tuffy out during the month of October.

Freddi was the founding member of the BCE club. She joined a family that had dogs, and knew practically nothing about cats. None of us did, really, or else we would have realized that her birth family was incorrect when they said all of the kittens in her litter were male. Hearing this, I simply chose the cutest one and named her after actor Freddie Prinze. Freddi proved her gender by having kittens, whereupon we dropped the final -e from her name. I'm glad we made that mistake though, because I had been instructed to choose a male, but I'm glad Freddi was mine. She braved us all, not only the dogs, but four kids ranging from my 13 to my sister's 8. Without retaliation, she allowed herself to be passed around, stepped on, posed like a doll, her ears folded over like a Dutch girl's hat, or blown into just because it was funny to see her shake her head, and goodness knows what else. She put up with it. She loved us all, but she knew she was supposed to be "mine." Just as Tuffy would later do with Mike, she "talked" to me. I mean in human words. She wanted milk, she'd sit at her dish and say "milk." She wanted out, she'd sit at the door and say "out." On one occasion as I saw her walking past me, I scooped her up in my arms. Normally that was OK with her, but this time she looked me in the eye and said, "Let go." Yes, that's exactly what she made her meow sound like. I followed her wishes and put her down. It turned out she needed to go to the litterbox.

Freddi merits founding status in the BCE club because she was so tolerant at such a young age. She was only two years old when something happened to her that she so thoroughly did not deserve, something so disgusting that after over 30 years, it still fills me with deep regret and profound sadness to think about it. When we moved--she was abandoned. I can only pray that she was found and adopted by a family who loved her as much as she loved us. Of all the pets I've ever loved in my life, it's Freddi I most want back. Freddi is the reason our whole family is cat crazy now. The four of us have handed our love for cats down to our children. And Freddi is the reason there is a BCE club for Alex to join.

[Queen of Chaos]

I miss owning a cat but my 11-year old pug is vision impaired and I'm so afraid a cat might injure his eyes. Cat's are unique creatures - they fascinate me. We had our Charlie for over 20 years and I'll never forget what a sweet, gentle, devoted companion he was.

[unaluna]

These were the best cat stories ever. And that includes the time my cat Spot brought home a dinner date for New Year's Eve to introduce to me (and feed) before they went out on the town.

Before Tuffy, Tiger, Paisley, and Alex came into my acquaintance, I wondered what it "said" about me that my two favorite cats of all time were named Freddi and Jason. It made me think, should I name one Damien?

[unaluna]

How long were their claws, and did they wear hockey masks? :]

On my first visit to a pdoc-T, he told me a story about his cat, who he said got mad at him for going on vacation, and when he returned, the cat used the dr's bed as a litter box! He even had to replace the mattress, not just the sheets and comforter! Why he told me this story, only Freud knows!

A couple of years later, pdoc-T is in the hospital for surgery. I find a birthday card that has a picture of a cat behind like prison bars, titled "When Good Cats Go Bad". I white-out the message inside the card, and cut out words and letters from the newpaper to read:
"HURRY IN GET WELL SOON OR THE STEARNS & FOSTER (an expensive mattress brand) GETS IT NEXT!" and I "signed" it with a paw print. I gave it to him when he returned to work, telling him he was not to question how it came into my possession.

Originally Posted by hankster

How long were their claws, and did they wear hockey masks? :]

LOL, actually it was Jason who had the long claws, and Freddi who had a gray body with a white face.

[choocha]

It warms my heart to hear others talk about their pet-children with as much love as I feel for mine. I come from a no-pet family; all of my family think that pets are expensive, inconvenient & unnecessary. I was (& still am) a desperately lonely, only-child who wasn't allowed to have pets. That's why, today, as an adult, I now have 4. I did have 5 pets, but my 1st baby, a black & white cat named Dude, died a year ago in June. At present I have two male whippets, named Skeet & Tito; and 2 female cats, called Princess & Mornay. My pet-kids are the only reason I keep on living. My family say I have an unhealthy attachment to my pets, but little do they know, that if it weren't for them, I would have been dead a long time ago. 2 little feline & 2 little canine companions have given me more support, treatment & therapy than I've ever been able to get anywhere. Anyway, more power to all the animal-lovers out there!