3 Thai rescue animals need your help to reach their furever home!

TL;DR: adopted street dog raises orphaned kittens, now the 3 (ridiculously cute, I might add) animals need your help to fly to their furever home

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Meet Blacky Boo, Boris, and Borscht- a trio of Thai street animals that we’ve come to love more than life itself. Maybe even more than wine.

Blacky is a born and bred Pak Nam Pran street dog. She spent her first few months dodging traffic by day and finding shelter in the pineapple field by night...

...until her pack viciously rejected her- and we stepped in as her adopting aliens. I mean… humans. Definitely not the alien thing.

It took a recovery diet, a bunch of meds, and bucket loads of love before she slowly began to trust us- and the road to her trusting other humans and/or dogs is still a bumpy one because of her residual trauma.

But underneath that trembly, terrified surface, she’s got an enormous heart full of love that only gets bigger by the day. She hikes. She paddles boards, She rides on the motorbike. She's an all-round badass pooch.

Little did we know that 1 year later, Blacky herself would be rescuing some babies. ‘WHAAAAT?!’, I hear y’all say. And let me start by clarifying this ain’t gonna be one of those heroic ‘dog saves baby from burning building’ headlines. It’s gonna be better…. WAY better.

On a miserable grey day in the middle of rainy season, we took a call from our good friend Andrea who runs Temple Dogs Pranburi, a small animal rescue operation for local street dogs. She’d noticed that the mama cat living in her land lady’s house had stopped showing up for a few days… leaving her two infant kittens alone in the rafters.

She had pulled down two little fluffer-nutters who looked like they’d just got back from a 4 day techno rave on Koh Phangan. Dirty, dishevelled, and in need of a good feeding (no dodgy luminous face paint or chlamydia though, thankfully).

Poor little babes hadn’t ever seen a human before! They hissed, spat, and clawed at us any time we tried to reach into their basket. Feral as they seemed, we agreed to foster them at our house until a permanent home was found. So off we went on our motorbike, with the two wee kitties curled up at the bottom of a laundry basket, as you do.

We brought them home, booted Blacky out the door, and tried to let the kitties get settled in their foster home. Easier said than done, my furry friends! The white one constantly had a face on her that resembled somebody who’d taken way too much ecstasy, and the brown one was completely immobile at the back on the laundry basket, hanging upside down like some weird, demented bat. We came to the conclusion that they were most probably Russian spies, and decided to name them Boris and Borscht.

Nearly an entire day passed before we eventually decided to brave the inevitable hiss-fest and reached in, picking up one kitten each and holding them against our chests until the squirming and spitting subsided. Then they sat with us and Netflix and chill-ed aaaall afternoon. Awwww…..

Cute and all, but it’s what happens next that’s really magical:

Poor aul Blacky Boo had been sitting patiently outside the door, knowing full well that there was something small, furry, and fiercely interesting with us inside the house. Slowly and carefully, we introduced the two tiny kittens to Blacky through the screen door… and guys, just a few sniffs later, they were snuggling together like a freakishly cute interspecies family inside the house.

Blacky stepped in and mothered the two orphaned kittens from that day on; she breastfed them (seriously!!), licked them clean, slept with them, and protected them from the dangers of the wild land around our house.

In the end, she raised two amazingly brave, seriously snuggly, and surprisingly adventurous dog-cats. Who like hiking… apparently.

But she couldn’t protect them from everything.

Life in the Thai countryside is tough for young cats, and both Boris and Borscht were attacked by a nasty tom cat in the night. Borscht came away with her belly sliced open from top to bottom, and Boris with a completely dislocated hip- both of which required emergency surgery to the tune of 15,000 baht. A pretty hefty sum when we had only planned on fostering them short term!

Thankfully, both made a full recovery

Inevitably, the day was approaching when our visas would expire for Thailand and we’d need to head home to Ireland for a while. We planned to take Blacky with us- and began the process of microchipping, vaccinating, and testing her blood in order for her to get certified for travel. Now, with a purse about 1,000 bucks lighter, her flight is booked to come with us in May and she’s ready to rock!

We had planned for Boris and Borscht to stay in Pak Nam with a new loving family, but lemme tell ya, with the INSANE amount of animals in need of adoption around here, finding a suitable home for them has proven to be next to impossible.

This, combined with the dangers of leaving them alone without their doggo protector (and such a high possibility of them falling victim to snake bites, cat fights, or vicious dogs) has led us to our ultimate conclusion….

Boris and Borscht have GOT to come with us!

We’ve got a house with a biiiig garden in the countryside overlooking fields of sheep for these guys to live in. A home where they’re going to be cared for, loved, and snuggled to oblivion for the rest of their lives.

Kinda like this:

We’ve started the process already, but the total cost of moving the cats to Ireland will be about 65,000 baht ($2,000 USD). So you guys, this is where we get down on our knees and ask with all our hearts if you could spare a couple bucks to help keep our kitties safe and our crew together.

Because if there’s one thing we learned through raising these three ridiculous fur babies, it’s that you never leave a member of the pack behind… even if they are a pair of pussies.

You can follow along the Boos bodacious journey around the world on Insta (turns out the cats have MAD social media skills) https://www.instagram.com/blackyandtheboos/.

Much love to each and every one of you,

Boris, Borscht, Blacky, Jim, and Grace xxx