The nature of the Local Interstellar Cloud ( LIC ) is highly constrained by the combination of in situ heliospheric and line-of-sight data towards nearby stars .
We present a new interpretation of the LIC components of the absorption line data towards \epsilon CMa , based on recent atomic data that include new rates for the Mg ^ { + } to Mg ^ { 0 } dielectronic recombination rate , and using in situ measurements of the temperature and density of neutral helium inside of the heliosphere .
With these data we are able to place interesting limits on the gas phase abundance of carbon in the LIC .
If the C/S abundance ratio is solar , \sim 20 , then no simultaneous solution exists for the N ( Mg i ) , N ( Mg ii ) , N ( C ii ) and N ( C ii ^ { * } ) data .
The combined column density and in situ data favor an abundance ratio A _ { \mathrm { C } } / A _ { \mathrm { S } } = 47 ^ { +22 } _ { -26 } .

We find that the most probable gas phase C abundance is in the range 400 to 800 ppm with a lower limit of \sim 330 .
We speculate that such a supersolar abundance could have come to be present in the LIC via destruction of decoupled dust grains .
Similar enhanced C/H ratios are seen in very low column density material , N ( \mathrm { H } ) < 10 ^ { 19 } cm ^ { -2 } , towards several nearby stars .