Dying and Living

Of the three kittens Ricky, Paco and Lula only Paco made it. He has still eye problems, but he seems to be over the worst. Lucy doesn’t seem to be infected. I spotted Meow once, his left eye seems to be infected but he is not emaciated.

Pico has the biggest problems. He is suffering from conjunctivitis on both eyes and is extremely emaciated. He leaves me no chance to catch him to at least clean his eyes. I constantly have to change the feeding place, as the residents look at the cats as a nuisance telling me that they are shitting all over the place.

Gina and Holly are beginning to settle in. I bath them every four days what they don’t like but have to endure. Babe reluctantly accepts their presence but Ronnie is happy to have new playmates.

Gina and Holly consider Babe now as substitute mother often trying getting close to her. Since Babe only reluctantly accepts this role so I try giving them as much attention as possible. But they are both pretty shy and are looking more to familiarize with Babe and Ronnie who is very friendly to them.

Ronnie’s leg is not healing well; it is still stiff. Maybe I let him running freely too early but couldn’t keep him in the cage all the time. Gina’s coat has grown back and she is very lively. Holly’s skin looks also much better.

At this stage I complete my summary from memory and continue with monthly reports. 

Gina and Holly

I was now at home just with Babe and Ronnie. He came to terms with his unpleasant situation quite well and ran around on three legs. His bandages were changed once a week. The fracture seemed to heal quite well but I was worrying about the stiffness of his leg. Doctor Oi was saying that the flexibility will come back as soon the bandages were not necessary anymore.

On December 12 told me Mike, my English snooker buddy, that someone dumped a plastic basket with two puppies at his wife’s stall and that the pups are in a deplorable condition. I took a look at the puppies. They were about one month old and suffered from massive hair loss. If they would have stayed in that dirty box without sufficient food they wouldn’t have survived. I took them to Naklua clinic where doctor Oi recommended treating them with a dermatologic shampoo twice a week.

I put the puppies back into the basket, took them home and bathed them. Since I had the facilities I decided to keep them for a while. They were both females. I called the bigger one Gina and her sister Holly.

Robbie, Patty, Ruby and Ronnie 

As Doggy joined us now only off and on, Blacky and Babe got friendly with each other with the result that Babe got pregnant. In early August 2011 I couldn't find her at her usual rest place and asked the resident where she was. The woman told me that she had whelped and showed me the place where she was hiding.

I found her at the rear end of a narrow, concrete-built shelter full of plastic waste. That time the weather was very hot and the temperatures even at night above 30 degrees. In that hideout it was even hotter. Hidden in a heap of waste I found four black pups and a black and white one. One of the black ones was already dead and for the other four I feared the worst. Fortunately, Babe was very calm and let me take the pups out. I carried them in my shirt, took a pick-up taxi and drove together with Babe to Naklua clinic since I had no idea where else to put them.

I was very surprised how smart Babe reacted to my action. She had probably never seen a taxi from inside before and I had no hand for her to help her in. She just hopped in and followed me into the clinic where she was put into a cage with the pups.

From that day on I went to see her and the pups twice a day for three months. After the pups opened their eyes and started to get active I took them out into the clinic garden, fed them and let them play with each other. I called the males Robbie and Ronnie and the females Patty and Ruby. Robbie, Ronnie and Patty were pitch-black like their father Blacky and Ruby was black and whited spotted. Robbie and Patty were very robust and ahead in development. Ruby was lighter built as Babe is, and Ronnie was the smallest and weakest one of the four.

Mid-October the veterinarian told me that she was contacted by a farmer who would like to take all four puppies onto his farm. I agreed to his offer under the condition to talk to him first. He told me about the environment the dogs would live in and since I trusted his integrity and the judgement of the veterinarian, who knew him as a client for some time, I agreed to let him adopt all four pups.

Unfortunately, when the pickup day arrived, the farmer did no show up and when I called him the next day he told me that due to the flooding in his province he was expecting his farm would also be affected very soon and therefore could not take the dogs with him.

The veterinarian told me that she couldn't accommodate the dogs much longer since the clinic space was very limited. She asked me to advertise the dogs for adoption which I did. After two weeks a woman was interested in taking Patty. I visited her at her house and since it was an estate with a large garden and the woman seemed to take good care to her other dogs, I agreed to the adoption. Since that day I have been looking for Patty two times and she was doing well.

Another month passed while I was desperately looking for a suitable and affordable house to rent. In mid November I found an acceptable one and I moved in with Babe, Robbie, Ruby and Ronnie. I removed all furniture from the living room and stored it into one of the bedrooms, put the kitchen table and a chair into the living room and made the second bedroom my living room. The dogs became quickly used to their new home and rampaged through house and garden.

The small terrace in front of the house was secured by a gate which I kept closed. After a few days I let Babe and the pups out and we explored the neighborhood. I found a piece of waste land where the dogs could run and play.

After we have been to that piece of land for a few times and I was sure that the pups could find their way back home I left the gate open at times and the dogs lied down close to the house wall. While doing my household chores I didn't watch them for a couple of minutes relying on Babe to take care of her pups. All of a sudden I heard a blood curdling howl of pain from one of the pups. I rushed out of the house spotting a car driving slowly right through the pups who were closely lying together.

I stopped the car, pulling the pups from underneath the car realizing that Ronnie's right leg was obviously broken. Absolutely furious I tried to open the car door to pull the driver out but fortunately for him and also for me he locked the door and drove on.

I locked the dogs into the house and took Ronnie to the next clinic where his leg was x-rayed. The x-ray view showed a broken femur. I was told that the cost for a necessary surgery would be 20,000 Baht which are about 500 Euro. I drove on to the Naklua clinic where they estimated 5,000 Baht for the surgery. The next day I picked Ronnie up. His leg had been pinned and casted. I took him home.

A few days later I received two requests for adoption. The first was for Robbie and the second for Ruby. With Robbie it all happens very quickly. A Brit married with a Thai was interested to take him. One hour after the call I met him at Naklua clinic and we drove in his SUV back to our house. Robbie understandably did not want to enter the car so I took him into my arms and we drove back to the clinic where the Brit’s wife was waiting. Robbie obviously sensed that something in his life would be changing because he was sweating and salivating what he never did before.

When we arrived at the clinic I put Robbie into the arms of the Thai woman petted him a last time and let him go. It was not easy at all.

Two days later an Italian called telling me that his girlfriend would like to adopt Ruby. I invited him and his girlfriend to take a look at Ruby since they knew her only from a picture. One week later they came and picked Ruby up. I was assuming they are good people who would lovingly look after her.

Meanwhile, I was also looking for Patty. Her new owner kindly invited me to see her; Patty seemed to be content with her new home. After one week I called the Brit and the Italian. Both assured me that Robbie and Ruby had settled in well. A year later I met the Italian guy in the clinic and he told me that Ruby was fine.

Old Man, Blacky and Babe

In my neighborhood, two houses down from where I stayed in my friend's house, a woman also took care of street dogs feeding them every late afternoon. She kept some in her house and one of them, a seemingly very old fellow, was always lying in front of her door steps. Every time I was passing by he was growling at me and never showed interest in other dogs. He obviously was suffering from an accident since his front legs seemed to be broken once. Therefore walking, even short distances, was difficult and tiresome for him.

About two months after I met Doggy the neighbor moved out, taking her dogs with her but left the old fellow behind. When he realized that she would not come back he started howling in grief for hours on end. Finally I talked to him and for the first time he didn't growl at me but looked up at me and wagged his tail. He obviously was in need of a new master. Since Doggy was a very friendly dog, she also took pity at him and Old Man, that's how I called him, was grateful for her sympathy.

That time I took Doggy and Paula every night out for a walk around the block. After a few days Old Man joined us, hobbling behind me while Doggy and Paula were chasing down the alley. 

A couple of weeks later a big black male ridge-back entered the area and was right from our first encounter very friendly and easy going. Very soon he joined us on our regular evening stroll around the neighborhood, never engaging into any confrontation with other dogs until Blacky showed up, obviously with the same intention as Rowdy, the ridge-back, to find out whether the area was a place to stay.

Rowdy and Blacky were both of the same size and powerful built. And as nice Rowdy's personality was, as bad seemed to be Blacky's character. After a few days of nasty fighting between them Rowdy quit the field and never came back. I was not happy about the new situation since Blacky was showing his dominance to all other dogs at the area and none of the residents liked him, me included. But that didn't hinder Blacky to take Rowdy's place joining us on our strolls around the block. It goes without saying that I also fed him and as we went along I started to like him. After a while I even managed to teach him not to snatch at food I was giving to the other dogs.

After Paula's death and when Old Man gave up catching up with the pace of Blacky and Doggy, I really enjoyed walking both of them since they got along very well and Blacky tried hard to behave. 

After a couple of months a new dog entered the area and found a place on one of the residents doorsteps. It was a brown white spotted bitch with a gentle expression, I called her Babe. When I touched her I realized that her skin was scabbed over and full of ticks. I tried to remove as many as possible which she patiently endured. This treatment I had to repeat every night as she seemed to be prone to tick infestations.

Doggy and Paula

In late March I met Doggy. Driving on my motorbike just around the corner of the place where I now I stayed, I saw a cat lying in a strange position on the footpath. I stopped to take a look and realized that she was still warm but either unconscious or just died recently. Next to the cat was a female dog waiting and when I approached her she turned on her back as if she wanted to say: That wasn't me. I took the cat to the vet and was told that she had already died.

A few days later I saw the dog in front of the house where I now lived and she approached me in a friendly way. I called her Doggy because I was not used to deal with dogs and didn't know whether she would disappear the next day. Soon we became good friends and I fed her regularly. As a stray dog she was in a fairly good shape and her condition improved further during the following weeks.

Doggy was a fairly young animal and had not yet gave birth. So I decided end of June to take her to the vet to get her spayed. I left her five days in the clinic and kept her another day at home and then she was fit and well again. 

Not long after her recovery she appeared a few times with another dog in tow. In the beginning her companion was very cautious coming close but trusted me very soon watching Doggy being pet and cuddled by me. A woman, who was feeding street dogs, told me that the other dog was Doggy's mother and so I adopted her as well and called her Paula. 

Doggy liked to stay in my small apartment while it was too hot outside and also often stayed with me during the first part of the night but demanded always to get out in the wee hours of the morning. I took Paula also a few times up in my room but she preferred to stay outside and was very often out of sight during daytime.

Doggy and Paula got along very well. They often played together and I took the dogs every night for a walk around the neighborhood. As usual, I let Doggy out in the wee hours on September 22nd and when I stepped out of the door in the morning I noticed something strange happened.

Doggy was hiding under a car looking full of fear as Paula was aggressively barking at her. Doggy was obviously very confused  and it took me quite a while to convince her to come out from her hiding place. As soon as she emerged chased Paula her down the alley. I managed to catch Doggy after a few hundred meters and keep Paula away from her as she tried to attack her daughter. Doggy was trembling in every limb and it took me half an hour to calm her down holding her in my arms. After she seemed to quieten down a bit I went to search for Paula. I found her a few minutes later not far from the house but she ran away was out of sight immediately.

In the early evening hours a neighbor told me that Paula got run over by a car on the heavily trafficked street near by and died.

A new start

On February 18, 2010 I finally went back to Pattaya, moved into my friend's house and started to work on that project. On that very day I headed straight to my old apartment looking out for Meow and Pussy. The flat was still unoccupied and I asked my landlord for the keys. Sitting on the terrace until late night I was waiting for the cats to appear but none of them showed up.

From that day on I went every night to my apartment using a deserted house in the neighborhood to enter my old terrace to look out for Meow and Pussy, but the only visitor who showed up to receive her daily food ration was Lady. 

One day in late February I discovered two kittens peeping down on me from the edge of the roof; Lady gave birth to new kittens again. A few days later they came down to the food bowls and were growing week after week. As soon as I recognized their sex I gave them a name as I always do with animals I establish a relationship with. Unfortunately only Knurri the tom survived, since Lee the female cat didn't show up after a month and I've never seen her again. 

Knurri got his name because he used to growl like no other cat but not while angry, it was just his habit (knurren in German means to growl). Knurri was very cautious in all his movement and always kept his distance from me and I only could touch him once and that was on the last day of his life on February 15, 2011.

I found him hiding under a heap of clutter outside the abandoned house meowing heartrendingly. When I took a close look I noticed that he could not move his rear legs and was obviously in severe pain. I could pull him out of his hiding place and took him to the clinic. The vet told me that Knurri broke his spine and recommended to put him to sleep in order to end his suffering. When the vet gave the injection Knurri looked at me in despair and I couldn't hold back my tears.

Back to the year 2010. On the 17th of March, when I was sitting on the terrace of my old apartment feeding Lady and Knurri I discovered a big black cat walking down the terrace balustrade of the attached house next door. For a moment I didn't realize that it was Meow but when he came closer and I called his name he snuggled up to me, purred and let me pet him.

Farewell to good times

Despite some problems and excitements I had with Meow and Pussy I enjoyed the months living with them a lot. But since I couldn't find an appropriate job I ran out of money and had to accept an offer of a friend helping him selling cheap watches at trade fairs in Germany.

Fortunately, another friend decided to visit Pattaya in September and October and I asked him to move into my apartment to take care of the cats. My plan was to make enough money working on several trade fairs so that I could return after two months looking for a job, keeping the apartment and resume my life with Meow and Pussy.

However, it turned out that I really disliked the way my friend cheated his customers into buying crap for excessive prices telling them all kind of bullshit. I tried to cope with this unpleasant situation given the fact that there were not many alternatives for me to choose from. But in early November I decided to quit the job and went back to Pattaya having almost no money in my pockets and not much of a clue what to do next. My friend took good care of Meow and Pussy and also of Lady, and after he returned to Germany I moved back into my apartment.

Until the end of November I was trying to organize myself a job but finally to no avail. So I decided heavy heartedly to give up my apartment and asked my landlord's wife to take care of the cats until my return to Pattaya. She agreed but went to visit her family upcountry and my landlord suggested to let his housekeeper take care of Meow and Pussy. I handed over enough money and food to feed the cats for four months, moved all my furniture into a room of a friend's shop house and went back to Germany.

The friend who allowed me to store my stuff in his house had been running a health shop in Pattaya for several years and got stuck in Germany. He told me he was developing several business ideas and was working on a project which he couldn't get on with on his own. Since I was completely broke with no real prospect of getting a proper job, on welfare and eager to get back to Thailand as soon as possible, I was intent to accept his offer moving into his house in Pattaya and work on that project.

In the meantime I tried to find out how Meow and Pussy were doing. I emailed my landlord and he assured me that they were being fed by his house keeper and were doing fine. But my feeling told me otherwise. The friend who took care of them during my first absence had been to Pattaya again and I asked him to look out for Meow and Pussy. He went several times to my apartment but couldn't find neither hide nor hair of them.

Mimi and Momo

Pattaya is a city with hundreds of so called "beer bars", often 20 or 30 crammed together with a Tattoo shop and a stall selling Yadong, which is traditional Thai medicine steeped in liquor, among them. In one of those bars I used to play pool and off and on sat at the Yadong stall to enjoy one or two glasses of the red booze.

One day when I hung out there again I noticed a small black cat wearing a collar obviously being hungry. I asked Uan, the Yadong selling girl, whether the cat belongs to someone and she told me that she used to be the cat of a bar owner who recently gave up his business and left her behind. I bought some chicken meat on a skewer to feed the hungry kitten and she polished it off in a flash. When I asked Uan whether she could keep an eye on the cat if I would provide food she agreed, and since then I visited Mimi almost every day. Uan took good care of her and Mimi, that's the name we gave her on recommendation of Mimi, a Chinese bar girl, made herself at home in Uan's shop.

In the following weeks Mimi grew up to be a proud beauty not a bit interested getting near other cats living among the beer bars. End of April I thought it was time to get Mimi spayed and took her for ten days with me after she spent two days in the clinic. Mimi was easy to handle and liked to stay with me but I had to bring her back to Uan's shop since my friend did not allow animals as permanent guests in his house.

One day, when I visited Mimi on my daily tour, Uan presented me Momo, a tiny tabby tom cat which someone brought to her knowing that she was taking care of Mimi. Momo was only a few weeks old and very weak but lovely and all the bar girls visiting the Yadong shop for a couple of glasses to make work easier, loved him. Even Mimi adopted him after a while.

Three weeks passed but Momo didn't grow a bit, probably because of suffering from diarrhea more or less permanently. Since Uan only opened her shop during the night and the cats were left to take care of themselves at day time, and the shop and its surrounding were not extremely clean, to put it this way, I thought taking Momo home would help him to overcome that condition.

That time I worked at home and could therefore keep an eye on him. Momo adapted well and tried to enjoy life. After a few days I went to the vet with him and she told me to change diet to find out what is best for him. She also advised me to pay attention to the risk of dehydration. After two weeks Momo's condition deteriorated and one morning I found him hardly alive, hurried to the vet who only could record his death. I was very sad being unable to save his life and also for the reason that he was the first animal that I tried to take care of that died. That time I couldn't imagine that many of them would follow.

Meow's adventures

Meow was now a fully-grown tomcat with lots of outdoor experiences. Several times in the morning he came back home with minor injuries which I treated myself. But one day he returned with a nasty bite on his lower back, I guess caused by a face off with a dog. I had to take him to the vet, who had to put him under general anesthesia to facilitate surgery.

Meow's favorite enemy was the big, fat, neutered tomcat of my Norwegian landlord Rick. Rick lived two houses away and our both rooftop-terraces were easily accessible from either house. Rick's cat and Meow loved to intrude the others territory with the result that confrontation and fighting were daily fare. 

One day I did what I know now I shouldn't have done. Meow and the fat cat confronted each other toe to toe on our terrace, hissing and growling at each other. In order to prevent an imminent attack from either side I stepped in between the two of them, and at this very moment Meow decided to attack his opponent but instead of teaching him a lesson he sank his teeth into my calf, which started bleeding heavily.

I never thought that a cat’s bite could be so bad, and that Meow could open his mouth that wide. The bite wounds caused by upper and lower teeth were two and a half inches apart. I decided to see a doctor and he gave me a couple of rabies shots.

Usually Meow came back from excursions into the neighborhoods every single morning, every now and then he didn't show up for 2 days but never longer. However, in early July 2009 I didn't see him for several days and started to worry. Pussy also suffered from his absence and got friendly with another tom cat which I haven't seen before. He started to visit us every day to take Meow's place and I contacted the vet to get Pussy spayed.

Two weeks had already passed when I saw one morning a ragged and starving cat sitting in front of my balcony door. As soon as I opened the door I realized that is was Meow who pounced on the food bowls. I was so happy to see him again but life away from home did not fail to leave its mark on Meow. It took him a couple of days to adapt again and to regain his old relationship to Pussy.

That was only the time after Meow put things straight, chasing Pussy's new companion out of the apartment who showed up for a date, unaware of Meow's return.

Our new home

I quit the job in spring 2009 and moved into a town house in an old Thai settlement in Naklua area. It was a huge apartment on two floors with a large balcony on the third and a 30 square meter terrace on the 4th floor. I chose that apartment since I wanted to provide Meow the opportunity to move in and out and to be able to roam around freely.

The first few days he was not happy and couldn't quite cope with the change. But when I completed our new home with my old furniture he settled in and started to discover his new environment with a more relaxed stroll in his stride.

I always left the terrace door ajar so Meow could go in and out freely. Not long after another cat visited me and decided to stay, so I fed her as well. I called her Lady. One day I noticed that she had two kittens which lived on the roof of the house next to mine. It was a grey tabby cat, similar to her mother and a black one with a white patch on her chest. The tabby cat was much bigger than the black one and already quite bold compared to the black one which was tiny and very timid.

I trusted Lady that she would take care of the kittens, since I couldn't do anything else than feeding her properly. But after a couple of days only the black kitten appeared regularly and I've never seen the grey one again. For some reason Lady rejected the black kitten and did not let her suckle anymore.

Fortunately I was not so inexperienced as I was when Meow was at the same stage of his development and I managed to lure Pussy, that was the name I gave her, into my apartment and after a while she became more trusting and Meow also accepted her to join the party. Actually, he acted like an elder brother, showed her to go in and out and after a couple of weeks he took her on his nightly forays.

Lady appeared routinely as ever to get her food but showed no interest in Pussy who also gave up approaching her after a while. However, Lady always tried to make our apartment her home herself, but since her digestive system seemed to be in a mildly chaotic stage with the result that she had chronic diarrhea, even Meow was fed up with her and chased her out when she tried to enter the upper floor.

It all began with Meow

I have been living in Pattaya since 2002. When I was working for a marketing agency in 2008, my boss' wife found a kitten in the front basket of my scooter, that I had parked in front of the office. The kitten was so tiny and undernourished I thought it wouldn't make it in this hard environment for strays, and if honest I was only half half-heartedly interested in its fate since that time I just had a distant relationship to animals.

I was working in an office on the second floor and lived on the third floor. After about a week or so the kitten was still alive and every time I went down to the main office I noticed it and started to show interest how it fared. I realized that the pitch-black kitten was a tom. The cat became more and more adventurous and when I noticed that my boss' wife and her little daughter lost interest in it I took more and more care of the little thing, feeding it and took it upstairs in my apartment. 'Meow' as I called him was more and more happier to stay with me than downstairs with the Thai folks. I have to explain that 'meow', is the Thai word for 'cat' and actually also a common nick name for Thai girls. But I gave Meow his name before I knew that he was a male. 

As the time went by I got really attached to Meow, and when he was 6 weeks old I took him to a piece of grassland in front of the house where he liked to roam around on his own and after a few weeks had passed, his confidence grew and he fancied a walk over the roofs of neighboring houses.

One day, when I came back from shopping I heard him meowing pitifully. I saw him sitting on a bay window from which he could not get down. I climbed up the wall, took him in my arms and climbed down again. Two meters above ground he moved vigorously and wanted to jump down. I was scared he would hurt himself since the ground beneath us was concrete. So I decided to jump with him still in my arms.

I did a lot of sports in my life and also a lot of jumping, so I thought just two meters wouldn't be a problem to land safely which I did. Meow jumped out of my arms and ran away. When I tried to erect myself, breath taking pain radiated from my feet. I couldn't walk anymore and had to crawl into the house and up the stairs. Next morning my both feet were of bluish color and I couldn't walk nor stand.

It took me two weeks before I could slowly shuffle around again and I went to see a doctor. He told me that a couple of ligaments were torn and it would take quite a while to walk normal again. That time I didn't know that it would take me about half a year to walk and stand again without pain.

My boss was not happy about my reduced availability and with hindsight I know now that this incident was the beginning of the end of my employment with that company.