Karma

Born:  October 9, 1972
Died:  February 24, 1976; euthanized after being run over by car or beating (unknown)
Gender:  Male
Type:  Domestic Shorthair
Coloring:  White
Origin of Name:  John Lennon's song "Instant Karma"
Nicknames:  None
Unique Habits/Characteristics:  After first few months, didn't purr.  Meowed at "spirits in the ceiling"
Diseases/Illnesses:  Skin infections/abscesses
 
 

Karma was the first, a teeny proverbial bundle of fur who caught my mother's attention one day when I was
in high school.  Actually, he caught the dog's attention; Fritz the dachshund really wanted that cat, and I
couldn't have agreed with him more.

I had always wanted a cat.  I had been in love with the feline species since I was old enough to know they
were a separate species.  I had begged, cajoled, and manipulated my mother for at least 12 years.  It hadn't
done any good.  "I hate cats," she hissed.  "They're sneaky".

Until the day her beloved Mother's Day present to herself (the dog) wanted the cat more than she did.  Until theday my estranged father dropped in for a visit and asked "What the hell is that cat doing here?"  She hated my father more than she hated cats.  The cat stayed.

I arrived home through the back gate, with my mother saying calmly "You have a visitor."  Huh?  She
nodded toward a cardboard box I had pilfered on the neighbor cats' behalf, and out jumped a pathetic teeny
little white furred critter.  As I stood there holding the back door open, mouth agape, he ran over to me,
stopped and meowed, and ran straight into the house like he owned it.  Thus did the first cat come into my
life.

He purred when we first got him, but stopped somehow along the way.  I will never understand why this happened, but it did.

It took me some time to realize that, through all the years I had wanted a cat, Karma did not come for me.
He came for my mother.  He came to teach her to love cats, which she never had.  I didn't need the lesson; I
already loved cats.  To watch my mother start to care about him, and eventually embrace him totally with
complete and utter passion was an amazing thing to behold.

I named him Karma after John Lennon's song "Instant Karma", which was on the charts at the time.  The
vet's best guess put Karma's birthday right about the same time as John Lennon's.  It seemed utterly
appropriate.

In those days, although I loved cats, I knew nothing about them.  I thought that it was cruel to keep a cat
indoors, and I thought that it was mean to neuter a cat without his permission.  These two things proved to
be terrible mistakes.

Karma was all white, and had a propensity to get into fights in the neighborhood.  This led to an untoward
number of infections from claws and biting from the lesser cats in the neighborhood, since, apparently,
Karma became King Cat.  There were a lot of vet expenses and treatments to clear up these skin problems.

One time, we decided to try a different vet for some reason or another.  My mother and I walked into the
clinic.  It stunk.  There were animals crying in the background.  The vet examined Karma, and was a bit
rough, in our opinion.  He exasperatedly said "I'll be back" with animals howling loudly in the background.
When he left, my mother and I looked at each other with horror in our eyes, and I said "Let's get out of here
NOW!"  We never went back there.  We didn't know enough at the time to report this clinic, unfortunately.

Karma was the King of the neighborhood.  I don't want to know how many kittens in the neighborhood were born because I didn't get him neutered, and others did not spay their female cats.  I'm sure there are descendants of his descendants still running around, though.

On occasion, Karma would simply go insane.  He would stare at the ceiling, and meow in a very loud voice, and suddenly go tearing about the house.  As I've said, he was the first cat.  We had no clue what was going on.   I would say he was "talking to the spirits in the ceiling".  I would also say he had the "rowdies".  I now know this is normal, and there are many different names for "the rowdies".

I went off to college when Karma was two, and I couldn't keep him in the dorm room.  Besides, my mother had connected deeply with him, and probably would not have let him go.

When he was three, he disappeared.  For months.  One day, my mother saw a nervous, freaked-out white cat in the alley out back, and swore it was Karma.  She couldn't get close to him.  She started leaving the back gate open, and leaving cat food just outside of the gate.  Slowly, she moved the food closer and closer to the back door of the house.  Slowly, he kept following, until she was feeding him inside the house.

Was it Karma?  From the oil stain on his pure white tail from laying on the floor in the garage, I believed so.
I still do.

He finally took off again, we thought, just a couple of months before I was supposed to be able to take him to
college with me (as I moved out of the dorm).  He was gone a week.  One night, my mother heard a
pitiful meow coming from out front.  She went outside, and there was Karma, unable to walk or stand.  She
took him to the vet, but the diagnosis was terrible.  He had internal injuries.  He had either been beaten, or
run over by a car.  The fact that he was right next to the front porch yet couldn't walk led my mother to
believe an angry neighbor had beaten him and left him by the porch.  I will never know.

The injuries were extensive, and survival was questionable.  She made the difficult decision to have him put down.

I cried and raged, and knew that my decision not to neuter him had been a huge mistake.  The guilt I
bore for Karma haunted me terribly, and all I can do now is to urge anyone reading to not make the same mistake I did.  Please, please, please -- spay and neuter your pets.

He was a beautiful, sweet, special cat who is still missed.
 

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