Goodbye Karma

Any good story should have a beginning to catch the readers attention, ours starts with a worried tenant coming to the apartment office complaining "I think I have a rat in my wall!"

Being as Beverly and I were the ones to deal with this problem I asked "Why would you think this?"

He replies "There is a scratching and a squeaking coming from my kitchen wall that just recently started!"

I gathered a few tools and we went to the apartment in question to find and remove whatever was disturbing our tenant. The noise apparently was coming from behind the refrigerator, so we moved it and I cut a hole in the wall a bit above the sound and looked inside.

He was a truly handsome fellow even then, long flowing black hair, his eyes barely open, and from the tone of his voice he was hungry.

I suppose it was the eyes that did it, Beverly decided "We are taking him home!" End of that discussion!

It was quite obvious to me that he had Beverly's number at a very early age, and he took every advantage of that fact.

We already had two females Grayson who was also found in a wall, and Seraphim, who was rescued from a soffit in another building. He was to be followed within a day or two by a birth brother from another wall in the same building, this one we named Sgin Dubh, he was a survivor! So we had a small family that would grow up together.

Karma was a very special little man, one of the most even tempered of all the cats I have known, he was the first of the cats to help out when we would bring another kitten into the house and would hold them and let them sleep on him. As they got older he would be their mentor

Karma sleeping in a pot

Besides being nurturing there was also a spiritual side to Karma:

Beverly was the first to notice him go into the bathroom and put his head under the shower curtain, after a while she got curious "what was he doing?" he would stare at the side of the tub apparently meditating for some time, purring his little mantra, then I suppose he had a mini vision and would go about his business for a while.

He had another ritual that he was eventually able to teach some of the other cats:

In the evening when he would find the kitchen light on he would circle the room looking for just the right spot. He would proceed to carefully drag his shadow into a pile in the middle of the vinyl floor, then raise up on his tip toes and do a little ballet or we would call it his "spider dance". It was most certainly worth the price of admission!

He grew into a very handsome fellow, at his prime he probably weighed about twelve or fourteen pounds, very long black wavey hair that one would normally think jet black, but had a iridescent fiery copper color floating within it's surface in the sunlight

Karma was very popular with all the tenants that lived near us and they would all stop to pay him attention when they would see him sunning on our doorstep.

We lost Karma a short while back, he apparently got in the road and got run over on a sunday evening. Beverly and I took him out to our farm and buried him near a couple wild plum trees where we had previously put his brother and older sisters that preceeded him. We imagine them as we remembered them playing together again

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