Misunderstanding, unjustified expectations or deception?

“How could they lie to me?” she weeps.

The vet shakes her head. Her English is excellent, but English is not the woman’s native language, and it’s very difficult to understand her.

Finally I think I comprehend. The woman is a tourist, using Bangkok as a base while she takes short trips. On the street outside the hotel where she has been staying, she’s found this cat and decided to take care of it.

I don’t know why she chose this cat. She mentions that the cat seems to love her, waiting for her whenever she’s returned to the hotel.

Then, the day she was going on a trip outside Bangkok, she found a hotel employee who agreed to adopt the cat. To cover food costs and such, the woman says she gave the man Bt5,000.

“Do you promise to take care of the cat?” she says she asked the man.

“Of course,” he reassured her. She says she went off on her trip, thinking that the cat would be safe in a new home.

Then she returned to the hotel to get ready for another trip. Much to her surprise, the little cat was there, greeting her happily.

“Why is she here?” she asked the man, but he didn’t answer. She found the address of the vet’s clinic on the Internet, grabbed the cat and rushed to the vet for help.

“The hotel lied to me!” she weeps now. “Why would they do that?”

Perhaps the man understood that he was to feed the cat and ensure that she was all right. In this way, he thought he was giving her a home. Perhaps he never understood he was supposed to take the cat to his own home. Judging by the cat’s clear eyes and glossy fur, he’s done a good job.

Now, however, it isn’t clear what the woman wants to do about the cat. The vet offers to find the cat a good home, if the woman covers the costs of vaccinating and neutering.

The woman shakes her head. “How can I believe you?” she asks. “I don’t know you.” I suppose the question is fair, given that she’s in a country she doesn’t know, dealing with people she doesn’t know. We give her our email addresses, but she keeps on misplacing the paper we’ve written them on. The email address she gives us is incomplete although she insists it’s accurate.

Then she says she wants to take the cat to her own country. She doesn’t seem to understand that it will take at least several days to acquire all the necessary Thai documents, and we don’t know the requirements of her own country for importing pets.

   “Oh, I’ll just pay some bribes,” the woman says. “You can do anything with money.”

    She leaves the cat at the clinic while she makes ticket arrangements and such. 

    In the afternoon, she returns, but now she’s a completely different woman, my vet tells me.

    “I won’t leave the cat here,” she says angrily. She disappears out the door with the cat. It’s been weeks now, but we haven’t heard from her.

The woman can take care of herself, but I worry about the little cat.