Many of us can say that our furry friends have special powers that can heal our souls. From navigating our confusing lives and figuring out what our path is, a companion can give us immense comfort and friendship like no other. As we always say, pets aren’t just adorable creatures that bless us with their antics, but they’re our family.

Today, MyFriend would like to introduce you to K. Au and K. Samuel, proud pet parents of three adorable, human-loving feline friends Olivia, Penelope, and Rupert. From the streets of Bangkok to the warm embrace of K. Au and Samuel’s arm, Penelope and Rupert came into a loving home and then made a miracle like Olivia happened! Who can unlock the mystery of how a ginger tabby and an ordinary short-hair tabby made a Siamese Cat? Find out more in this interview filled with heartwarming insights, hilarious exchanges, and stories!

Introduce yourself and your family members

Au: My name is Au or Aniwat Na Nakorn. I have been a PR in the fashion and beauty industry for as long as I can remember. Now we are pet parents, obviously.

Sam: My name is Sam. I’m a teacher and I teach nursery, and this is Rupert.

Au: This is Olivia she’s the youngest one in the family, but I don’t see where the mum is going. Penelope is gone, she’ll be out.

Tell us about your cats

Au: I’ll start with Penelope first, I found her 7 years ago at K-Village actually. She was put up for adoption. She actually got dumped twice. She had an owner before. They put her in a cardboard box to Adopt Me Please Foundation and then I was there on Sunday, but actually the day before someone adopted her already but then they returned her the day after. Because they said they had allergies. But that’s cool, because I have found her and she’s been with me for 7 years now.

Sam: Then we have Rupert. So you rescued Rupert, found Rupert, he wasn’t very well and he became Penelope’s life partner.

Au: Because when we found him, like, we found him when we took Penelope to the vet in Sukhumvit 26 and there’s a hotel nearby where the owner came and he was like “Okay, I have three cats for adoption.” and I’m like, “okay I want the ginger one”. And then he was like, “But they all have an eye infection, and the mother left them basically.” So, I was like, “Okay, I’ll take this one” then he was like “Can you take three?”. I was like “No, I would love that, but I lived in a small condo” back then, which wasn’t allow to have pets.

So we took him home and didn’t know he was a guy actually, I thought he was a girl, that’s why I put him up with Penelope, and then afterwards he started to have a boner and then he turned into her life partner since then.

2018, they had Olivia and another two in the batch but I gave them all to my grandmother. So we decided to keep Olivia only because I feel like she loves humans. She loves having company so much and you couldn’t think of any way around where she would be out on the streets with noone. So we were like, okay let’s put those two to my grandmother and she will stay here. As you can see right there, being nosy ever since.

So these two made a Siamese Cat?

Au: Yeah it’s such a shocker. If anyone knows, please make a comment! No, because Penelope is basically an American Shorthair, but I think a bit of a defect. And Rupert, I don’t know what you call them but like they have so many breeds as well, but finally they made a Siamese with blue eyes.

Funny stories about your cats

Sam: So they’re quite vocal. They’re really vocal. They really love to talk to us as well as to each other. In terms of funny stories, I feel like Olivia is probably the one who makes us laugh the most.

She’s like a ragdoll. She loves to put on the table and spun around, she’ll lay flat on her belly, kind of like showing that she wants more. And she loves to be put on your lap and do a dance…Cat Choreography

Au: Catreography! – Yeah I think all of them, this one seems to be the most quiet one, by his personality and perhaps, a boy. I think.

Sam: He sleeps like, I swear, 23 hours a day.

Au: I’ve never seen any cat sleep this much. Like for real, like “wow, you live here rent free, but you enjoy your life”. And Penelope is actually the one who is the most cat. Because with Rupert, I feel like he’s a dog, and Olivia has a dog personality, like loving people, loving humans, being curious, which he is like a scaredy cat, somehow, sometimes. He would even be cautious even with some small toys. But Penelope is someone who is like, I need to know everything. Even our cleaning lady says to me that she’s like, Penelope’s a manager of the house basically. Like, anyone coming here, she’ll be like what’s going on, who.

Sam: Overseeing everything

Au: Yeah, and when she gets closer to you, that means she’s letting her guard down a bit. But she will not jump on your lap. Never. That is one thing, but the other two loves humans so much.

One funny story I will tell you about Penelope is that she is so routine-like, she will know that by, let’s say 7 or 8am in the morning is her breakfast time. I mean, we have a buffet here but she prefers an a la carte. With wet food and everything. So, she is someone who is like 8, and 5pm. He will know that if he sits there on the couch at 5, and she will just come and look at him, kind of like sending a telepathic message.

Sam: She will stare at me until I feel uncomfortable and then feed her.

Au: So yeah, that’s about them, but Penelope is, oh one more thing. Everything is pretty much on her terms. You know, a cat, when you see a super cat cat, they don’t let you control them. But these two, we don’t control them but they just love being around us so much, but for her, she’ll be like, “I don’t want you during the day time,” but whenever I’m doing skincare at night in the bedroom, she will just go in and like, go around my legs, like, meowing to get attention, sometimes jump up on my lap, like “Wow, it’s on your terms.”

I think the only one who’s ever hurt someones shoes is him. He just piss on it. Our friends came, he wore sandals and when he was leaving he was like “what is this water?” And I was like “Oh shit, sorry.”

Do they have any special tricks or talents?

Sam: Our cats are very untalented. I would say that. They’re loving, but they don’t have talents. I don’t think.

Au: That’s a good question, let’s say that, that’s the thing I talked to Sam the other day, as pet parents. If I got asked that question, I wouldn’t even know what to answer, because talent is such a broad thing to say. But I would say for her, she, Penelope has a very good aim. I think she’s getting old as well. But before, she has a good aim for like, when she jumps to things, before, two years ago.

Sam: Maybe out of the three, she is the one who is the most “acrobatic”.

Au: You know those cats where they’re like, *wavering around*

Sam: Yeah, she likes to jump and leap. Rupert, not so much. More of a lap cat.

Au: But I would say lap cat has a talent. Because you know I read somewhere a long time ago where ginger cats have healing power, more than any other breeds. So, that’s one thing where I feel like when I was sad in the past, and when you feel like your life is over, falling apart, he would be the one who, “I won’t walk up to you, but if I’m close to you, I’ll go on top of you to make you feel nice.” I think that’s been really good because Sam as well, work is always tiring, every time when he comes home, that’s his medicine.

Sam: You know, after a long day, everyone gets stressed sometimes, but he’ll always put a smile on my face.

Au: And for Olivia, I would say, have you watched Alvin & The Chipmunks? Olivia is not like Alvin. Olivia is more like Theadore, the blue one. Yeah, she’s more like that, the clumsy one, she’s like that. But she loves making you laugh.

What do you think your pet likes most about you?

Sam: I think Rupert just loves the attention. And I think collectively all three loves the fact that we are the ones who give them food.

Au: I mean we always have the conversation saying that if we ever accidentally pass away, like, what will they do to us. And we feel like they’re just going to eat us. You know.

I feel like they really take after the personalities of both of us. Olivia is a good mixture.

Sam: Penelope is you.

Au: Yeah, Penelope is me, like, cut throat, but also she can be chill sometimes, she just cautious about things all the time, and being alert all the time, and it’s like girl chill, there’s no harm around here!

Sam: Yeah, she’s like a housemother at a sorority.

I don’t know if Rupert took on after me or if I took on after Rupert. Over the last two years I’ve had some bad health, some operations, so I had to be more chill. So he’s definitely been that little sidekick keeping me company. Definitely kept me sane during lockdown. I think Rupert and I, we’re the ones who vibe the most.

Au: One thing I’d share about him is that he, is someone who needs to find someone to connect with. And it has to only be one person.

Sam: He likes to keep his circle of friends small.

Au: Have you watched Twillight? Jacob, he imprints with that baby. Rupert is like that, but not in a sexually way.

Sam: I’M THE BABY? I’m that horrible CGI baby?

Au: That’s more him, but Penelope, I think we have a long history. So she connects with me in that level, like he does with him. Where she doesn’t do it with him. So we kind of have our soulmates in a way. And Olivia is just here to make everyone happy.

Sam: Olivia loves everyone equally.

Best memory with the three cats

Sam: I think all three of them, when we first met, Olivia was a kitten still, I think like, the best memories are from then. Just like the simple things like coming back from work and they’re piling on top each other sleeping in the couch. In lockdown, you get one of the many parcels delivered to keep you sane, and using the string or the packaging, making it into a cat toy and playing with it. I think those are good memories. I think Olivia agrees.

Au: I think with Penelope, it’s just for me, that’s more sentimental. First cat after, you know, my mom never bothered to have cats. My mom never wanted us to have cats, she was not into pets when we were young. We had space, we had everything but like she just thinks that pets, but that was like so long ago, dogs would be the guardian of the house, which is what most of the Thai people believe that. So it was more like dogs. We were not allowed to have cats.

One day I picked up a cat from the street, and had it in my bedroom until it delivered babies on my clothes in my closet, which is common for cats. That’s when my mom was like, “no, we cannot have them. It’s messy.” So Penelope was the first cat that I could call my own. And I didn’t buy it.

Yes, we adopted Penelope and Olivia because we just feel like they still need home. There are so many of them. I’m not saying this to dog parents because I feel like they have different preferences, you know, with those pedigrees and stuff. But with cats, I feel like most people just look into cats and go in there to be like, they’re cute. You vibe with them. You don’t really care about their breeds, you’re not going to send them to a pageant contest. So that’s why for me adopting her was such a big move as well. Still late twenties, yeah it was such a rewarding experience to have her all along. When you build so much memories from not being close to each other and now kind of inseparable. It’s like a journey, seven years long.

The most rewarding thing about being a pet parent

Au: I think we agree on the everyday things, like the everyday aspects of life, you wake up to see them, you come back home to see them. Imagine we are some kind of people where we still go out to social events and such, but we were just like, dying to come home. So we can be with them in front of the TV chilling out together, that’s what we like about this experience. It gives me more responsibility but in a good way. Kind of like train you to be a better person.

Sam: Yeah, I think it feels like home when you come back to them. There’s always like, someone here, something here, and if you come back from a bad day of work, or whatever. Always here. It’s lovely. When they hear the keys rattling the door, when you’re about to come home, I’ll hear meowing. I’m like, “I’m home!”

Au: And I feel like with two of these, especially right now, for some reason, she’s been like this for a long long time. She loves belly rubs, and you know belly is such a sacred place for cats, and she loves that so much, she’s obsessed. He just adopted that trait not so long ago. I think he was kind of closed to it, but now when you did that to him, and you know when you get the reaction back from them, when you know cats don’t show that much emotions, these cats are so expressive, and when you give them a belly rub, they have the best time of their lives. There’s something fun about that, you’re satisfied in a way.

Sam: Yeah, Rupert and I will spend a lot of time laying on the sofa, and I’ll just be slow blinking at him so that he fully knows that I love him.

Anything you would like to say to the audience

Sam: ADOPT A CAT! You’ll be so happy. You won’t regret it.

Au: I mean, if you want to buy, that’s your choice. I’m not someone who is an ass about buying pets, but I feel like there’s just so many out there that need a home. And you can change someone’s life. It’s not like I’ve changed their life, they have changed mine forever. And that’s what I feel that if you can do that, adopting is such a good alternative, we save lives, they don’t get killed, and you can change their lives forever. I feel like let’s just do that, it’s 2023, lets do it.

Sam: Year of adopting cats.

Au: Yes, year of adopting cats. It’s a new era.

In a world where the boundless love of our furry companions touches the deepest recesses of our hearts, the stories of K. Au, K. Samuel, and their endearing feline trio resonate as a testament to the transformative power of companionship. From the bustling streets of Bangkok to the cozy haven of their loving home, the journey of Penelope, Rupert, and Olivia unfolds with heartwarming grace, redefining the very essence of family ties.

MyFriend would like to thank K. Au and K. Samuel for welcoming us into their homes to share these stories with us, as well as the three feline friends that greeted us with curiosity and endless meows!

Wonder who else we’re going to introduce you to? Stay tuned for next week’s episode of Meet MyFriends!

💙 Meet MyFriends! is here to take you all to get to know new friends! Whether it’s fellow parents, business owners, or professionals in the field, pet lovers get to hear all the wholesome stories they have to offer!

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