About 80 dogs and cats have been rescued from a house in Bangkok's Khlong Sam Wa district, where they were confined in cages by people asking for donations to feed them, police said.
The rescue operation came after the Watchdog Thailand Foundation (WDT) received complaints from local residents that a large number of dogs and cats were caged at a house at The Suite 2 Housing Estate in Khannayao area in Khlong Sam Wa district.
The residents said the animals were being kept in the house by people who asking for public donations to take care of them.
WDT officials contacted Khannayao police and the Livestock Department.
On Friday, police went to the house and found a woman collecting the carcasses of some dead cats. She was said to be the house owner who opened a Facebook account to call for donations.
The woman asked the police to spare her from legal action. When told by the police to stay and wait for WDT and Livestock Department officials to arrive, the woman got into a car, cut her arm with a knife and drove off, before ramming the car into the wall of the housing estate.
The woman, whom the police did not identify, was injured and lost consciousness in the crash. She was taken in an ambulance to a hospital for treatment.
What animal welfare volunteers and police officers discovered in the house during a raid on Friday. They returned on Saturday. (Photo: Watchdog Thailand Foundation)
On Saturday, officials from the WDT and the Save Elephant Foundation, accompanied by police, went to the house for an examination. They found about 80 dogs and cats confined in cages. Nobody was living in the house, which was full of piles of garbage, animal excrement and carcasses of dead cats.
A refrigerator in the house was found stuffed with bags of dead cats.
Officials from the two foundations took the dogs and cats that were still alive, but very thin and hungry, to an animal hospital.
Khannayao police were investigating to compile evidence for legal action against the people who had apparently tortured the animals by confining them in cages, leaving them to die, while calling for public donations.
The rescued animals, after being treated in hospital, would be taken care of by the Save Elephant Foundation in Chiang Mai.