So I visited an elephant park in Thailand and spent an awful lot of time with cats… I have to appreciate all of the animals a place has. For the first three days I was there, the only pictures I’d sent home were of cat. My mum may have asked me where the elephants were…oops. Though in my defence, the cats had taken up residence in my room, whereas the elephants were all over the place.
Lots of people, including me, like cats. So I thought I would write about all these beautiful fluffy friends. If you don’t like cats, well, I don’t think this is the place for you.
The place I was staying is called Elephant Nature Park. As well as 72 elephants they had over 200 cats, plus dogs and a whole lot of water buffalo.
The centre has a wonderful area called Cat Kingdom, which is as it says on the sign. A lot of cats live in this little place but most of the cats live all around the park in their own territories. Cat Kingdom was one of my favourite places because it was where the kittens were, plus all the cats there liked attention, so if you wanted a place to go and read a book while a cat sat on your lap this was it.
Sadly, you aren’t actually allowed to play with the kittens, most of them were too young, so I just stood outside their cages and tried not to cry over their cuteness. Some of them would climb up the cage to be at eye level and say hi; so precious. Oh, if I could, I would’ve adopted them all in a heartbeat.
I also had one of the few rooms that cats could get into and every day I’d come back to find at least one there snoozing on my bed. Often at night, one would manage to find its way into my mosquito net to come and sit on me, purring at me. I would wander into my room to find a cat sat on a shelf on top of my clothes, not quite so cute when they got up and my clothes were all over the floor, but I’m very forgiving.
Photography: Izzy McLeod
Post-Processing: Rae Tashman
