Families have been torn apart by the coup and beloved pets are no exception, with many owners going to great lengths to save or be reunited with their animals, while others suffer the anguish of separation.
By MOE THAW DAR SWE | FRONTIER
At a shelter in Yangon, around 60 cats play and sleep together while elsewhere their owners struggle against each other to decide the future of Myanmar.
Some of the owners are democracy activists who have been jailed or forced to flee their homes to avoid arrest. Others are soldiers who have been deployed to the frontlines of an ever-broadening conflict to crush the uprising against military rule.
Daw Aye Maw*, the manager of the shelter, accepts all cats regardless of their owners’ politics. There are around 500 cats in total, around 40 linked to dissidents and another 20 or so from military families. But while she takes in cats left behind by dissidents for free, military members need to pay – essentially subsidising costs for the others.
Often, when a dissident is arrested or flees, their home is seized by the regime and sealed off, sometimes with pets still inside.
“So I ask the ward administrators for help to open the sealed doors in order to save them,” Aye Maw explained, saying she’s typically contacted by neighbours who hear the cats crying inside.
“Sometimes the owners contact me later to say they will repay the favour in the future.”
Ko Tun Lin* is one such activist. He has been separated from his two Shih Tzu dogs for nearly two years, after the military regime issued a warrant for his arrest for fundraising to buy ammunition for resistance forces.
He fled Yangon in the middle of 2022, just ahead of a raid on his home, heading to territory controlled by the post-coup People’s Defence Forces in Magway Region.
“The challenge was how to keep these dogs safe when I could no longer live in the city. I thought about bringing them with me, but I worried that it wouldn’t be easy to get them food and medicine and they wouldn’t be able to handle the weather,” he said.
Tun Lin has raised both since birth – their mother was given to him by a close friend for his 27th birthday – and like many pet owners, he considers them like his own children. He left the dogs with a cousin, giving him enough money to cover the cost of food and other essentials.
But with the economy in freefall since the coup, not everybody can afford to pay for a caretaker. Some leave their animals at monasteries or animal shelters.
“Some pets even become homeless because their owners were arrested and there is no one else to take care of them,” said Tun Lin.
Animal refugees
After the coup, expats and wealthier young Myanmar professionals were among the first to leave the country. Many of them had pets and this was a boon for pet relocation companies, which could be contacted on Facebook and typically had connections to customs agents and veterinarians.
Taking advantage of corruption and lax border regimes, pets were shipped by land to Thailand, mostly arriving safely in Bangkok a few days later, for a fee of around US$500.
But for the less wealthy and more vulnerable, the journey was often longer and more chaotic.
Ko Saw* was a university student at the time of the coup, and was jailed for two months after joining mass protests in the Kayin State capital of Hpa-an in 2021. Upon his release, he joined his family in Lay Kay Kaw town, which had become a haven for dissidents, like his mother and sister, who went on strike from their jobs at the environment ministry in protest against the coup.
At the time, Lay Kay Kaw was controlled by the Karen National Union, a long-standing ethnic armed group that has closely allied with the pro-democracy uprising. But when the military attacked in December 2021, Ko Saw fled with his two dogs – a big Burmese Spitz and a smaller terrier.
“During the battle, my big dog was too afraid of the sound of weapons to walk. He just sat down and gazed at the people running. So I had to carry him,” the 23-year-old Ko Saw said.
A boat took him and the dogs across the Moei River, which marks the border with Thailand, where he took shelter at a refugee camp. Among the massive human suffering, he saw other families that had brought their dogs with them and were struggling to take care of them.
“Some dogs were sick and needed medical treatment,” he said.
After about a month in that refugee camp, Ko Saw decided to relocate to Mae Sot, a town in Thailand near the border where many political refugees live. But it was a three-hour walk, and at first he couldn’t find a way to bring the dogs, and even considered returning to Myanmar.
“I didn’t want to leave them because they are my family,” he said.
Eventually he found a driver willing to transport them free of charge. But it wasn’t the end of his troubles, as he found it difficult to rent a house that would allow him to bring pets.
“Now I have a house, but my dogs still get scared every time they hear the sound of firecrackers,” he said.
The border is so porous that some are able to bring their pets back and forth multiple times, like political activist Ma Thin Zar, who shuttled her cat between Yangon and Mae Sot.
Her cat story began in 2018, when she attended a literary conference at Shwemawdaw Pagoda in Bago town, joining a delegation led by Min Ko Naing, one of the country’s most famous political activists and poets. During the trip, they encountered a two-month-old kitten struggling to walk because its hip had been broken by a dog bite.
“Our leader Min Ko Naing loves cats so much that he brought her to Yangon to treat and care for her,” Thin Zar recalled. “The doctor said the cat would limp for the rest of its life” and would be incontinent.
Min Ko Naing would bring the kitten to the team’s office every time he visited, and eventually Thin Zar adopted her, naming her Mee Nge Lay, which roughly translates to “youngest daughter”. When Thin Zar married in 2020, Mee Nge Lay quickly took to her new father.
“It’s like this cat loved my man more than me,” she said jokingly.
After the coup, Thin Zar continued her political activism, which she declined to elaborate on, while her husband underwent military training with a PDF. But Thin Zar’s activities quickly drew unwanted attention.
“The military regime was hunting people from our group. They issued an arrest warrant for me and raided my parents’ house, so in July [2021] I decided to move to Mae Sot,” she explained.
They made the difficult decision to leave Mee Nge Lay and their other cat behind in Yangon, hoping to bring them over to Thailand when their situation was more stable.
“Most cat lovers, shelters and pet hotels find it difficult to take responsibility for a disabled cat who isn’t able to control her bowels,” Thin Zar said.
Their other cat was permanently adopted, while an animal rescue shelter finally agreed to temporarily take Mee Nge Lay, just before Thin Zar and her husband reunited and headed for the border in August 2021.
She later paid K500,000 (around $130 at the market rate) for a driver to bring Mee Nge Lay from Yangon to Myawaddy town, across the border from Mae Sot in Kayin State, and then 1,500 baht ($40) to ferry her across the river. But she was only there for one month before Thin Zar and her husband had to relocate, so they sent Mee Nge Lay back to Yangon, recalling her once more when their lives stabilised again.
“It was the happiest time for our family of three,” Thin Zar said of the next seven months. “She was very strong and very playful, but still incontinent. My husband and I cleaned her together; that’s how much we loved her. Being with her was a constant source of joy for us.”
A burden on the shelters
Meanwhile, animal shelters are struggling under the burden of an increasing number of abandoned pets, while the prices of goods continue to shoot up and outside support dwindles.
Aye Maw and the owner of another shelter in Yangon said that they receive fewer donations now than before the coup. They attributed this both to the post-coup economic decline and the fact that people are more likely to donate money elsewhere, like pro-democracy armed groups or civilians displaced by the conflict.
Daw Myint Myint*, who looks after around 500 dogs and 100 cats in Hmawbi Township, said every day she buys around four 48-kilogram bags of rice and 12kg of chicken bones for the dogs, and Thai-made cat food. The prices of these items have surged since the coup.
“Now it’s like hell,” said Myint Myint. “If there’s no donor in the morning, I have to think about where to take a loan from.”
Myint Myint said she’s racked up a debt of K15 million buying food, while Aye Maw said she’s had to use the money she inherited from her late parents to pay off a similar debt.
“This is the job I want to do, even if I have to suffer for it. I can’t sit and wait for donors when lives depend on me,” said Aye Maw.
She said she’s even had to modestly cut food rations. “They scream a lot when they’re hungry… I feel sorry for doing it, but I need to save for the next day’s food.”
Both Myint Myint and Aye Maw doubt if their shelters can continue to function if the situation fails to improve.
Tun Lin said that, after almost two years, local conditions are finally stable enough to bring his two dogs to Magway, claiming the PDF is now in control of the area where he lives.
Meanwhile, the cousin caring for his Shih Tzus is planning to flee Yangon due to the military’s decision to enforce a conscription law earlier this year.
“This military dictator is not only harming the people of this land, but also the animals,” he said.
Some pet parents have found stability too late. Thin Zar and her husband were granted asylum in a third country last year. When they left Thailand, they sent Mee Nge Lay back to the animal rescue shelter in Yangon to await resettlement.
“This time, we will never meet again,” Thin Zar said. “She died while we were still trying to retrieve her. I was able to see her for the last time on a video call.”
Thin Zar said she had Mee Nge Lay’s ashes shipped to her, and performed a religious ceremony for her lost daughter.
“You can say that I’m obsessed with a cat, but love will always live on,” she said. “Her life was unique. She was saved by a political leader and lived through the ups and downs of Myanmar’s political journey.”
Thin Zar said the military coup has torn families apart and pets are an integral part of a family.
“Animals are living beings too. The world is not just for people to live in. Humans, animals and plants are all connected,” she said. “Living with them makes our lives more worthwhile.”
*indicates the use of a pseudonym for security reasons
