The Night Kafae Walked Into Our Dive Shop

It was the worst night of the monsoon, the kind where the long-tail boats bang against each other in the dark and the power flickers every ten minutes. I was closing the dive shop in Rawai when I saw something small and wet in the doorway, shaking so hard that the water drops flew off him. A grey-black puppy, so thin I could count his ribs, with one white sock on his left front paw. He looked at me and sat down, as if he had an appointment.

I gave him a towel, a bowl of rice with some fish from our staff lunch, and a place on an old wetsuit bag behind the counter. I said he could stay for the night. That was six years ago, and we picked his birthday in the middle of that June.

The next morning I took him to the vet in Rawai, expecting bad news. Our vet said he was underweight and had some skin trouble and a few ticks, nothing that good food and treatment would not fix, and gave us a plan for vaccines and deworming. She also suggested we wait and see how he grew before guessing at his breed. Honestly, I never needed to know. He is a mixed breed through and through, and the only label he needs is Kafae, because he was the colour of strong coffee when he was wet.

Over the years he has become the unofficial welcome committee. He lies in the shade near the boats and greets every customer who walks down to the pier, whether they are a nervous first-time diver or a tour group of forty. Some people come back to the shop just to say hello to him. I have a small bowl of fresh water on the step for the stray cats too, which he allows, with a patient sigh.

He loves the sea but never goes deeper than his belly. He will wade in, look at the waves with a serious face and walk out again. I think he remembers the monsoon. He also knows the sound of the ice-cream cart from two streets away, long before I can hear it. His ears go up, his tail starts, and we both know what Friday afternoons mean.

People sometimes tell me he was lucky I was there that night. I always say it was the other way around. A little dog walked in out of the storm and decided what my life would look like for the next many years, and it is a much better life than the one I had planned.