The wallet and Karl

  This photo has nothing to do with the post. Its purpose it simply to draw your attention. (I guess it also has another Karl in it. I took it in 2007 on the Red Square in Moscow)

Yesterday, my husband found a wallet in the garage of our apartment building. He went down to get a pack of water bottles from the car, and he stumbled upon that object. He opened it, and found that it contained a driver's license. Finding the owner was pretty easy after that. He lives in our building. My husband told this story so calmly that you might think he finds wallets like that every day. Meanwhile, I was jumping up and down, asking these question 1) "Why didn't you take me with you to give back the wallet? I would have loved to see the expression on the people's faces." 2) "What else was in the wallet? Maybe a treasure map?" 3) "What did they say? Did they already know they lost it?"

It turned out that he didn't care what else was in the wallet. He knocked on the door of its owner for a while before anybody answered. My husband asked the man who opened the door "Is it yours?", and he said that it was. Then his wife appeared behind him, quietly saying "Oh my God..."

"So, if anybody comes up to us later to say something, it might be them," my husband said to me. Then he added "Do you remember Karl?"

This is the story of Karl:

Two years ago, we were riding in the elevator, when we saw a poster about a lost cat named Karl.
It was summertime. Three weeks passed since we saw the poster, and we were on a walk. We were a little way away from the building when we saw a cat in the evening dusk. I remembered Karl, and I had this hunch. I called him by his name. The cat stopped, and looked at me. We decided to try picking him up and bringing him back to our building, but he wouldn't let us touch him. So, my husband stayed to guard the cat while I went to get the owners.
I knocked on their door for the longest time, but, even though I clearly heard some footsteps in the room, nobody opened it. A guy came out of the door nearby; I explained the situation, and we started knocking together. In a little while, we agreed that I will go and help guarding the cat while he continues knocking.

A while passed, Karl's very sleepy owner came out, and together, we started the hunt. I'm pretty sure Karl remembered who she was. He would approach her, and then get back, but he wouldn't let her pick him up. It seemed like he'd had a hard time for a while. His owner saw that and started crying about the state he was in.

Some people passed by - some of them stopped to help us, while other looked at us like we were crazy. I remember one girl even tied her dog's leash to a tree, and started crawling around in the bushes with us, after Karl. More and more people joined in. We were worried that he would climb up on the tree, and we would have to call the fire department. Eventually, we made a sort of chain together, and trapped him by a flowerbed. The owner took off her shoes and pretty much jumped on the cat, finally capturing him.

I saw her a couple of weeks later, and she took quite a long time thanking me.