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De Poezenboot
Amsterdam
You can count on Amsterdam for being home to some of the most unusual museums and tourist attractions. De Poezenboot or The Cat Boat happens to be one of them. This is a cat shelter on water. Yes, this one-of-a-kind floating cat refuge is home to many of the stray and abandoned felines awaiting adoption in the city. It is a must see for all cat or animal lovers and is generally pointed out by several passing by canal tours. A world-famous tourist attraction, De Poezenboot or The Cat Boat, was Henriette van Weelde's idea. In 1966, Henriette took pity on a feline family that was taking refuge under a tree opposite her home on the Herengracht canal. Once the cats were settled in, they were joined by plenty more strays and soon people too started dropping off cats they could no longer care of. Eventually, there were so many cats that they not only occupied her house, but also the terrace and the garden. With more cats than she could handle on her hands, Henriette thought about buying her cats a houseboat citing if people could live on them, why couldn't the cats? Hence, came the first floating cat shelter in 1968.
