MANILA, Philippines — A domestic short-haired cat named Jon Snow White is the first pet to be repatriated to the Philippines due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overseas Filipino worker Karen Vinalay, an art director for 10 years in Myanmar, wrote Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. to request that she and her cat be rescued due to the current political situation there.
She informed Locsin that the Philippine Embassy in Myanmar denied her request to include pets in the rescue plane that would bring home Filipinos.
“It pains me when the Philippine embassy here denied my request together with the other Filipinos working here to bring our pets with us in the rescue plane that the government will be providing,” Vinalay said in her May 10, 2021 letter to Locsin posted on Twitter.
“Maybe, they have less appreciation on the importance of pets for people who have been away from home just to make a living in a foreign land,” she said.
The secretary instructed the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to coordinate the inclusion of Vinalay’s pet in the repatriation flight.
“Hi Karen, kindly send us a DM with your contact details so we can assist you. Thank you,” Locsin said in a post on Twitter.
Vinalay, with her cat, was among the 55 Filipinos from Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand repatriated by the Philippine embassy in Yangon on May 29 through a special chartered sweeper flight.
The repatriation flight was organized to assist stranded Filipinos in Myanmar due to the unavailability of commercial flights brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most of the Filipinos who were repatriated resided in Yangon. Six came from Thahtay Kyun Island in the Thanintharyi Region (1,275 km from Yangon) who had to travel by sea to Kawthaung and then by air just to reach Yangon for the flight.
This is the fifth government-funded repatriation flight since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 16th Philippine embassy-organized flight to repatriate Filipinos from Yangon.