Activists file complaint against Bangkok pet café where animals have died

Animal rights organization Watchdog Thailand yesterday filed a police report against Kitties & Bears, a pet cafe on Siam Square Soi 1, following claims from its former manager that the café let 7-8 dogs die in the span of a month due to diseases at the establishment.

Bangkok police and a veterinarian from Watchdog Thailand inspected the café yesterday and collected blood and saliva samples from the animals for testing, Morning News reported.

The visit by police comes just days after a lengthy Facebook post by the café’s former manager, Itsarachai Niyomrad, 20, who publicly accused the establishment of neglecting the animals.

Some of the claims include the fact that the owner of the cafe, identified as a Singaporean named Jonathan or Tan, refused to take his animals in for critical veterinary checkups and treatment. He also accused Tan of not quarantining sick animals and allowing the diseases to spread.

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In the original Facebook post, Itsarachai specifies that the Tan in question is the same man who operated the Cuddles Cat Cafe in Singapore. That establishment was shuttered and its owner — which Singaporean court records identify as Jonathan Tan Wei-De — was sentenced to two weeks in jail after seven of the 20 cats at the café died.

Set in the heart of Bangkok, the Kitties & Bears cafe has a selection of more than 40 dogs, cats, and raccoons for customers to play with.

The cafe admitted on Facebook this week that more than one animal had died on its premises.

“The news about animals getting sick and dying at our cafe in the past is true,” the Tuesday statement on Facebook reads.

“After the problems occurred, we took action. We’ve taken every single pet that was prone to getting sick to the Chulalongkorn University’s Small Animal Hospital. That was how we initially fixed the problem, but I admit that there are the animals that recovered and the ones that died. We did everything we could.”

“Every employee helped taking care of the sick animals — They cleaned and sanitized everything. We’d continuously tried to fix the problem. As of now, the animals at the café are fine.”

The veterinarian from Watchdog Thailand, Dr. Pattanaran Sadjarom, said the establishment had taken out the sick animals from the cafe and quarantined them elsewhere as of yesterday, but she suspected there are still sick pets at the café based on what she described as abnormal feces in the litter boxes.