This little fella (ok not so little) turned up in my neighbours driveway yesterday, at first it looked like he had driven the scooter himself! I tracked down the owner in the end and asked if it was safe to approach and take a photograph, he indicated not too safe! So I crept as close as I dared to take this picture.

Although he looks quite harmless he has really huge teeth, our neighbours told us about a baby that was killed in their hometown by one not long ago. The monkey walked into the garden of their friend and found the baby asleep outside, it started to play with it, monkeys seem to really like babies. The mother got scared and went to get help to get the monkey away from the baby. When a crowd of people returned the monkey became distressed and sank it’s teeth into the babies skull, killing it instantly. Pretty grim story I know but these things are fierce!

Koh Phangan has a single major export, no not drunk tourists following the Full Moon Party, I’m talking about coconuts. They have a really clever way of getting the coconuts down from the huge trees, what they do is train a monkey to do it!

This little fellow (ok he wasn’t so little and he had some wicked teeth on him) turned up in my front garden yesterday, his owner was making him climb the trees next to my house and pick the coconuts. It’s quite cool to watch, first they bite through the stem, then give it a quick twist, off it comes and they throw it down to their handler.

This one was pissed off though and although he looks quite cute in the picture he was snarling away at his owner something fierce.

My poor little cat was squashed by a motorcycle today, I’m really quite sad it was a very nice cat with a distinctive if somewhat crazy personality.

I had popped to the shop up the road to buy some orange juice (I have a bad cold and was thinking the vitamin C might help out) and was only gone for 5 minutes. When I got back I found Nuth standing over the body of the poor thing. She had walked across the road to visit our neighbour and the cat had followed her, when it heard traffic coming it panicked and ran straight under the wheels of a motorcycle.

There wasn’t a mark on her, she just looked like she was sleeping, she was still warm when I buried her in the garden under a tree, we lit some incense for her and placed a flower on her grave, let’s hope she finds a good home in her next life.

A few weeks ago we took in a stray cat, it was pretty wild at first but it seems to have settled in nicely though. There are a lot of stray cats on Koh Phangan, most of them look very healthy actually.
At first it didn’t eat very much, but gradually it got used to proper food instead of garbage from the streets and started to eat more and more. Because of this I didn’t really take a lot of notice at first when it started to get a little fat as you can see from this picture.

But now I can’t avoid the question any longer, it’s just too fat to be only food, I’m certain it’s expecting a litter of kittens, Nuth is gonna kill me she told me one cat and no more. Maybe it will have them and I can get rid of them before she gets back from Surin! I know what I’m like though I will want to keep at least one of them, especially if they turn out completely black like their mother.