Obscurely hidden at the base of a palm tree in the shadow of a high-rise in Bangkok, Janice Koehler watches over a metal cage placed across the parking lot. The trap is in place. The prey is approaching. Suddenly the cage door slams shut.
With the ease she owes to habit (she’s done it almost 700 times), Janice Koehler springs into action. Behind the bars, a spotted gray cat with a curled tail hisses and runs away. Janice Koehler tries to soothe him with gentle words and by placing a blanket on the cage.
It’s the fifteenth stray cat she’s caught that morning. By the end of the day, the veterinarian will start vaccinating and sterilizing the animals.
Within twenty-four hours, they will all be reintroduced to their territory, in the center of Bangkok. “I could never have imagined the number of stray cats in Bangkok,” tells us about this Filipino expat in Thailand, whose voluntary association Project Lumpi (named after a beloved and missing cat) aims to provide care to many stray cats.
According to Tavid Kamolvej, the deputy mayor of Bangkok (the city hall is responsible for social and health policy), the city has, among other animals “in a state of wandering”, about 70,000 cats, 130,000 dogs, but also “about 500 monkeys”.
While monkeys live on the fringes of urban areas, cats and dogs roam the streets, parks and buildings. Unlike Singapore, where almost all stray animals have been caught, vaccinated, sterilized and released, reducing their numbers to about a quarter of their population, the Thai capital has today failed to reduce its contingents of stray animals.
Stray animals and traffic jams, the same struggle
Bangkok City Hall has everything it needs in terms of veterinary equipment, especially vaccines, but has long suffered from a lack of resources and staff to gather information and