No Cats Allowed

Unfortunately, after living in our pool-side studio apartment for a mere two weeks, we have since uprooted and moved into a new townhouse after being asked to leave the posh apartment complex. To our surprise, cats are not welcomed at Ban Jed Yod, and so we had to go.

We Love Our Condo. What Do You Mean “No Cats” Allowed?

Four days after moving in, we were approached by the very friendly manager on duty, who said, “The owner likes pets very much, but doesn’t like cats because they are dirty.” Giving us the sweet-sour punch, huh? We were also told that because no cats were allowed, we had until the end of the month to move out. This left us less than ten days to find a new place.

We admit, we did not ask whether cats were allowed or not. We had no reason to think otherwise because the owner of the apartment building, who lives on site, owns three dogs himself. We also made it a point to look through the two page lease agreement for the clause that said “No Pet Allowed” (or in our case, “No Cats Allowed”) before signing it. In fact, the only things that were specifically banned from the apartments were explosives. Well, they’re in luck because we don’t have a fetish for dynamite!

We find it a bit bothersome that we were asked to leave although we did not breach the signed contract. In fact, the owner broke the contract himself by kicking us out at the end of the month (ten days), since the lease requires 30 days written notice if “either party desires to terminate the contract prior to its expiration”. In the event that we had breached the contract, we should have still gotten 15 days written notice of vacancy. But that is of no importance…

TIT. This Is Thailand. We’re suppose to just go with the flow, and so we did. Seeing as we are newbies to the area and don’t want to start on the wrong foot with the law (by the way, what is the law?), we didn’t fight it. It’s a bit disheartening because this is our second experience in Thailand where rules are treated more as guidelines, and it is questionable whether they are even applicable to farang (foreigners). Todo, er I mean MooShu, we’re not in Kansas anymore!

In our search to find a new place to live, we found several places that had the same “no cats” policy, but many that did allow cats. These were mostly temporary accommodations (month to month), and would have worked for us for the time being. But lucky for us we found a brand spanking new townhouse to move into. Phew!