Days in the Life of a Pattaya Hotel Owner

After living in Thailand for three years without having a pet, December was a month where we had seen animals coming and going from our home with alarming regularity. Yes, I am aware that we have owned goldfish over the years. However, for me, you really cannot call fish of any description pets. You put them in a bowl of water, feed them once a day and really that is it. They do not endeavour to protect you from criminals and they do not look longingly and lovingly into your eyes. Most certainly, they do not have the slightest interest in whether or not you are around, given that fifteen seconds after seeing you, they have completely lost all recollection of your existence. Fish, in their way, are not dissimilar to Pattaya hotel guests: give them a place to live, offer them some food and then as soon as they go home you no longer exist, until they start to book their next vacation!

As you will appreciate, everything in Thailand has a twist of one description or another. Nothing is ever straightforward, nothing is ever as it seems — the “Land of Smoke and Glass” as I have previously described this Kingdom. The arena of pet ownership is no different, in fact appears even more bizarre than life with human kind.

Mrs. Boss had decided early in December to acquire two rabbits as family pets. Why? I have no idea…. My only real knowledge of rabbits relates to the myxomatosis outbreak during the ’60s, when great swathes of the United Kingdom were sprayed with something called “DDT.” It served its purpose in destroying the wild rabbit population but also was successful in killing off several other species of wild life together with the complete destruction of large swathes of flora and fauna across the British countryside. With the wild rabbit population almost destroyed, they gravitated to the status of household pets. Here in Thailand they are purely pets. Were there ever a wild rabbit population in existence at any time, no such chemical compound such as DDT would be required for their destruction — the Thais would simply have eaten them to extinction.

Two white fluffy things in a cage appeared at our house one morning. While it was not particularly exciting for me, Mrs. Boss seemed charmed by these creatures. No doubt a lot of her love for them stemmed from the facts that (a) they were in a cage and (b) they would not, nor could not, answer her back. The children loved them too — all children love pets — and they spent hours playing with and talking to the rabbits. James had been given special instruction on how to play with rabbits, since the last time these creatures were introduced into our household some months ago. I know I said that we had not previously had any pets whilst here, but to me, a few days does not count. We had purchased two very small baby rabbits and within 48 hours they were gone. It transpired that James had decided to teach them football — with them as the ball — and one hefty kick from him saw them pass away. Their passing wasn’t so peaceful. Perhaps they left this world wishing they had been sprayed with DDT instead.

With James shown how to properly pick up, play with, and feed the rabbits, both Mrs. Boss and I expected this to be a much longer relationship. However, at the end of the second day we were reduced from two rabbits down to one. Mrs. Boss initially decided that it must have escaped from the cage and run off. I considered this to be a most unlikely theory unless these creatures are capable of pushing themselves through a space 1/20th of their size. The body, perhaps, could be squeezed through the gap, although I would still find that difficult to believe, but most certainly the head would not go through the cage bars even if had been bashed several times with a large lump-hammer. Regardless of the implausible nature of Mrs. Boss’s claim, I managed to keep my thoughts to myself, thus avoiding another pointless argument. We were by now just about over the arguments of the previous few weeks and I was not at all interested in returning to a combat zone at this moment in time.

Mrs. Boss then surmised that perhaps our housemaid, Lan, had killed the rabbit and immediately the said housemaid was dispatched to work at the hotel. If she could kill a rabbit then how much of a bigger step would it be to kill a small child? Whilst I am aware that most murderers are supposed to have been cruel to animals before they start their rampage upon the civilian population, this hypothesis did appear to me to be another rather pea-brained judgment. I will concede that the housemaid had made it perfectly clear to Mrs. Boss that she did not like animals and would not take kindly to any request to add cleaning out the rabbit cage out to her list of chores, as limited as they may be. However, she did stop short of saying she was prepared to slay any beast brought into the family home and, whilst she is not my favourite person on this planet, I just do not see her as some form of crazed bunny boiler! Mrs. Boss’ logic, however, was also really not worthy of an argument and having been advised that a replacement housemaid had been lined up, I decided to go along with her thinking.