Kazuma no Sofu

Kazuma's grandfather is remembered as calm, kind and remarkably forgiving. Years of mistreatment do not appear to make him openly bitter toward the relatives who regard him as cursed or inferior.

That gentleness is illustrated most clearly in Kazuma's childhood memory of him. When his young grandson refuses candy because he believes anything offered by the Cat must also be cursed, the older man responds without anger.

His acceptance should not be mistaken for evidence that his circumstances were humane. The kindness Kazuma remembers exists alongside extreme isolation and the contempt directed toward him because he carried the Cat spirit.

As the previous Cat, Kazuma's grandfather carried the same unusual branch of the Souma curse later inherited by Kyou. He wore the juzu-bead bracelet associated with suppressing the Cat's true form.

Like other people possessed by the Cat spirit, he was physically separated from the official twelve Zodiac members and treated as the family's scapegoat. His curse therefore carried social consequences beyond the transformation itself.

Kazuma's grandfather appears primarily through memories that explain the history surrounding the Cat. His life demonstrates that the treatment awaiting Kyou is not an isolated threat but a practice inherited from earlier generations.

He spent much of his life confined in the Cat's Room. Even his marriage offered little genuine emotional refuge: near the end of his life, his wife admitted that she had remained with him out of pity rather than love.

Kazuma overhears that admission and remembers his own childhood cruelty toward his grandfather. The guilt becomes a major reason he later takes Kyou in and refuses to allow the next Cat to suffer the same life.

Kazuma Souma is his grandson. Kazuma's guilt over rejecting his grandfather as a child becomes one of the motivations behind his decision to raise the next Cat with genuine parental affection.

Kyou Souma is the later bearer of the Cat spirit. Although the two do not share a direct relationship, the previous Cat's treatment establishes the fate the Souma family expects for Kyou.