Phanu Garden

Not all of Yeepun’s cats went north. A third group lives at Phanu Garden, the family’s place in Bangkok, looked after by Yeepun’s sister Mee.

Mee has been rescuing cats as long as any of us. She is the one who found Tiger crying in a parking lot in 2012 and Snow on a Bangkok road in 2015, and she was with us the night we found Lucky beside a garbage bin a few streets from here. When I’m in Thailand she travels with me to the other two kennels.

In October 2026 she found Lomloy, a kitten who could not stand, on her flower rounds and drove her straight to the animal hospital. Twenty-five days later Lomloy walked across the clinic floor to Mee’s hand. Lomloy’s story has the videos.

Phanu Garden is a house in a village on the edge of Bangkok. I lived here with Yeepun from 2009 until about 2016. Today Mee lives here by herself, with thirteen cats. All of them are rescues.

When I moved in there was no fence and there were no cats. Then we started taking in the homeless cats of the village, one, then two, three, four, and so on. In the beginning they roamed the village freely. Then one day a pit bull that lived in the corner house got out and chased one of our cats into the canal in front of the house. She either fell in or jumped in to get away from the dog. My mother-in-law was visiting at the time, and she jumped into the water and pulled her out. After that we built the fence. It is about fifteen years old now, beat up and looking it, but it does the job.

The front yard is one big cat enclosure with a garden in it. The cats use it all day, and when I’m here I have my coffee out there. The cages are for the night. One cage near the house has a cat box inside and a cat who sleeps there; another set can be one big cage or three smaller units if anyone needs to be kept apart; and there is a room with a door that is closed at night, with a fan to keep it cool and plenty of places to play and sleep.

Indoors there are a few more cages. One cat lives in a tall cage because he fights with another cat, though I think he likes it there: the door is often wide open and he is just sitting inside asleep. Another cat sleeps in a cage at night and is out in the yard by day. Several cats simply live in the house, go out to the yard, and sleep inside at night; they get along with everyone, so they need no cage at all. Others are usually upstairs, asleep in their hiding places. There is a giant litter box, feeding stations, and the food store. And a scratching post the size of a twin bed.

Her cats are not all at the garden. Mee’s main orchid farm, the one she ships her flowers from, is in Nakhon Pathom about thirty-five minutes away, and strays find their way there the way they find their way to anyone who feeds them. She buys their food, takes the sick ones to the vet, and knows every one of them by sight. The farm is out in the countryside, and the snakes there take cats. A brown tabby who turned up this year was lost that way before anyone had given him a name. So Mee bought a big cage, and now the cats sleep in it at night with the door shut.

The cat at the top of this page is Own, which is Thai for “fat”. Five cats live at the farm today: Own and four of her children.

The farm doesn’t get a page of its own. Its cats are Mee’s cats, and whatever she sends from there, photos or video, you’ll find here and in the updates.

Tom visited in October 2026. The count is from that visit. The monthly cost is Mee’s estimate, not a tally, and she thinks the true number is higher; it covers the thirteen cats at the house and not the five at the farm. The cats’ names are coming.

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