Kai Nui will soon be greeting guests at Canberra’s Thai temple after he explored some more of the bush capital. Photo: Praparat Joeichum.
A very special member of Canberra’s Buddhist community is home, safe and sound, after a mysterious journey.
The five-month-old kitten, called Kai Nui, was living with the monks at Lyneham’s Thai Buddhist temple, known as Wat Dhammadharo, when he disappeared.
Praparat ‘Joy’ Joeichum is one of the people who made friends with Kai Nui during her visits to the temple.
She says the “very, very friendly” and “priceless” kitten would interact with visitors to the temple, where he lived with his mother.
That changed in April, when he escaped after being taken to someone’s house so an event could be held at the temple.
The escape sparked a desperate search across the capital to find him.
After the cat’s disappearance, Joy spent hours walking the nearby streets, set up a cat trap with a camera, and put up posters across the city.
She also posted to a Facebook group helping Canberrans reunite with their pets, urging people to keep watch for him.
“Every way I could, I tried to spread the news,” Joy said.
After more than a month of searching, Joy received a call from the RSPCA – they’d taken in a stray that looked very familiar.
“They saw my post on the Canberra Lost Pet Database and compared Kai Nui to it … I asked them to help identify him by sending a photo of [the cat] to me,” Joy said.
“I looked at [the photos] and sent his [fur] marks back to compare them. It’s definitely him.”
While Kai Nui was reunited with the people searching for him, his battles aren’t over yet.
He’s spent the past weeks recovering under the care of vets across Canberra, undergoing X-rays, blood tests, deworming and other treatments.
“Today he is a lot better [than when he was first found], but he needs to slowly recover with all the treatment,” Joy said.
“Everybody loves him so much – all the clinics and hospitals I took him to.
“Everywhere [he goes], he’s a very calm cat. We are helping him to recover and become healthy again.”
When he’s healthy, Kai Nui will go back to the temple when Joy visits, so he can still see the monks and his other (human) friends there.
Joy said the search has ignited a passion in her to help other people find their lost pets.
“[You should] never give up. My partner went to me and said, ‘The thing is, you never ever gave up’,” she said.
“He’s [Kai Nui] taught me a lot about how to be calm, how to give love to everybody, how to love without wanting anything in return, and I will keep that with my practice in life.”
