HOW I GOT HERE

How it started

A few days ago, a neighbour came to me to ask for my help. A very sick-looking cat had taken shelter under her porch, and she didn’t know what to do. But she knew that I might be able to help, because people seem to know that I care for animals. She wasn’t the first one coming to me, and I suspect she won’t be the last.

I took the cat to the hospital. He was covered with fungus, tested positive for FIV and FeLV and will need to stay in hospital for a very long time. I posted about the cat online, in an animal lovers group. I asked for support, as I simply can’t afford covering vet bills for every sick animal I encounter. No one has sent me anything but heart emojis.

This is not the first time this has happened. I rescue animals, I help people when they ask me to, I feed strays in my area, I spend so much time at the animal hospital that it feels like my second home, I have donated to people who were asking for help with their rescues, but nobody is helping me. The only person who gave me some money to contribute to a big vet bill a few months ago is someone who doesn’t really have money to spare. But she cared and she wanted to help.

So I have decided to appeal to animal lovers around the world so I can keep saying yes whenever a neighbour comes to ask for help with a sick animal and act quickly when I see an animal in need.

The animals

I have been living in Thailand for 8 years and moved to Phuket 3 years ago. I arrived here with 3 rescue cats from Bangkok, and the plan was never to adopt more cats.

I now find myself with 7 cats and 2 dogs. All from the streets of Thailand.

I didn’t want to keep so many cats, but shortly after moving in, a beautiful skinny white cat started showing up every day at my door. I started to feed her. She kept coming back. Then she started bringing a calico with her, and a few days later, she brought a small black and white cat. They were hungry, so I fed them. They started coming closer to me and I decided I would get them sterilised and would try to find them homes. I had never trapped a cat, and failed on my first attempt, got bitten, and had to get a rabies shot. It’s normal procedure here. I ended up getting five shots over a few weeks. And I managed to catch the white cat on my second attempt. She was feral, she had tapeworm, but I thought that with some love and care, she would become adoptable. She didn’t, but she got attached to me, and I to her, and she stayed. We called her Mali, which means jasmine in Thai. The calico was next. She was attached to the white cat, and she was such a lovely and easy cat that I couldn’t let her go. We called her Cali. The black and white cat was so skittish, only a few months old, but I got her too. To this day, she still doesn’t let anyone other than me and my husband approach her. Her name is Oreo.

A few months later, a beautiful black cat started to visit us and spent a lot of time hanging out at our place. He wanted to come in. So I had him checked for diseases. He was disease-free, he was allowed in and we named him Onyx. He was very easy-going, got along with all the other cats, so he became ours. But he wanted to be let free, and as he never went far, I let him. He was so friendly that a few neighbours also loved him and fed him. I was always worried he would get hurt outside, but I didn’t want him to be unhappy inside. I kept going back and forth between “it’s better to have a short life and be free” and “it doesn’t matter if he feels like a prisoner, as long as he stays alive”. And one day, he got hit. Losing Onyx was devastating, I was mad at myself for letting him be free, and furious at all the people who drive way too fast through our village, and on the island in general. Animals getting hit by vehicles is way too common here and could easily be avoided if people stopped being so reckless.

Over the past three years, I rescued and fostered a few more cats. We lost our little Cali to heart failure. We adopted Onyx’s brother and called him Salem. And we found a tiny kitten in front of our house one evening, that we fostered thinking we’d get him adopted, but he ended up staying. He’s our little Cookie. At some point, I found myself with 10 cats in the house, including a mother and her two tiny kittens. Luckily, someone stepped up and adopted the little family.

I like to start the day with a nature walk and everywhere I go, I always end up being followed by dogs. So I started to bring dog food with me everywhere and became friends with many dogs. I started to contact Soi Dog Foundation regularly to get dogs sterilised and/or treated. They’re the largest rescue organisation on the island and probably in the country. They do a lot to help animals, but they can’t always intervene right away, and sometimes, the animals move and can’t be found.

About a year ago, I found out there was a nice walk I could do in my neighbourhood and I started to do it every morning. From the second day, a dog started to follow me. I called him Black Doggy. The following week, another dog started to join us. I called him Little Alien. Then, we had My Girl and My Boy joining our walks. Black Doggy and My Girl liked to run after chickens, so I got leads to protect the chickens and avoid trouble with the locals. We made friends on the way. Floppy Ear, who gave birth to a few puppies last September. Luna the Golden Retriever, who has a human and a nice big house. Thao and Tia, the excited puppies who have humans and a house, but who like to get out and do whatever they want. The twin girlies, white and beige, who also had puppies last year. The two barky dogs who have a house and believe the road belongs to them. And many others.

In December 2025, I found out that My Girl is called Kwai, My Boy is Milo, and Milo’s brother is called Soda. Milo had some infection and I asked my vet to come and check him. The owner was there and the vet gave him meds for Milo and vaccinated all the dogs on that day. That’s when it became clear to me that Black Doggy and Little Alien had no humans, because even though they were staying at the house where the other three dogs live, the owner didn’t think of them as his.

Since then, Black Doggy has been renamed Happy and has become my dog. He needed antibiotics for a week in January. I took him home to make sure I could give him the meds twice a day. I opened the gate at night to let him free and took him back home in the morning after our walk. On the last day, he didn’t leave. The gate was open, but he stayed. Around the same time, Little Alien got attacked by Kwai, Milo and Soda. It was horrible. Alien is very shy, and was definitely the weakest of the pack. He didn’t join the walk for a week and I was very worried about him. Then he joined again, and that’s when I noticed he was swollen on his side. At the end of the walk, he seemed very weak and unwell. I called my husband and told him to bring the car. Alien needed to see a doctor. It was not easy to get him in the car, he was very scared, but with some patience and a lot of sweat, we managed. When we got to the animal hospital, his abscess had started to leak. It was a massive abscess. Alien had a fever. He needed care. The vet told me he could have died from the infection. She cleaned him thoroughly. It took a really long time because there was so much pus. We left him at the hospital for a week. And then, there was no way I could put him back on the street. Happy had finished his treatment the day before and was chilling in front of the house when we got back. They had been friends for a long time. They are now brothers.

Why I’m asking for help

More and more wealthy foreigners are moving here. Nature is rapidly getting destroyed to build more pool villas, and every year, floods seem to be getting worse. I spend most of my time in my neighbourhood, and I have seen the forest shrink, the roads get more flooded and the animals finding themselves with nowhere to go.

The stray cat population seems to have grown since I moved here. Some people refuse to have their animals sterilised and let them roam free. I have appealed to Soi Dog a few times to come and get some dogs sterilised or treated for injuries. I have taken some cats up to their hospital, but they have informed me that they are not handling cats at the moment.

I have been trying my best to build trust with the local strays, so if they need care, I can approach them. I have had to deal with nasty people who don’t like dogs and was even threatened physically by a business owner who opened a business in some field where a mother dog and her puppies used to live. When I went to feed them one morning, he aggressively told me to go away and when I went to the back of the field, nowhere close to his café, to feed the puppies anyway, he came to me ready to hit me and later grabbed some stones to throw at me. He did not in the end, and it was the worst dog-hater I’ve had to deal with, but I know there are some people who poison animals and mistreat them in various ways.

Two puppies got run over in the same place near that field where they were not welcome anymore within a few weeks. It broke my heart and I’ve been posting online to ask people to adopt the remaining puppies, but nobody came forward. So, I bring dog food to a local family who live in a field away from the road, hoping that if they feed the dogs, they won’t need to hang out near the road so much.

I want to keep helping animals, but I have seen what happens to rescuers after a while. I’m far from being the only person who helps animals in Phuket, but it seems to me that it’s always the same people who step in, who take the animals in, and pay the bills. Most rescuers seem totally burnt out, and I don’t want this to happen to me.

I wish I could find more support locally, but most people who care are already stretched thin doing their own rescue work. Phuket is a transient place, people come and go, and it’s hard to build the kind of community that looks out for its most vulnerable. So I’m reaching out beyond the island, to animal lovers anywhere in the world who might want to help make a difference in a small corner of it.

I will blog about the animals, share pictures, and share all bills on the blog so every donor can see where their money goes and the difference it makes.

I will also improve the website as I go – I did this very quickly and I’m no techie, so will need a bit of time to figure out how to make it all better. I’d rather focus on content for now.