Cats in a Museum

As lockdown continues for us in Scotland, we’re continuing to relive our trip to Amsterdam in February 2019.

Opposite our lovely hotel there was a great cafe called Bagels and Beans, and they are dotted all over Amsterdam. It was perfect for breakfast each day as it overlooked the harbour and had a great atmosphere. They even had a bug bagel on the menu – imagine, crispy critters for lunch.

Amsterdam has some incredible museums, several that are world famous, but amongst all of these the best one we discovered was the wonderful Katten Kabinet. A museum dedicated to cats.

If you ever go to Amsterdam, make sure this is on your list of must visit places.

The museum is in an old house and was founded by the Dutch businessman Bob Meijer in honour of his ginger cat John Pierpont Morgan who lived from 1966 to 1983. It’s full of all things cat related, so as you can imagine, I was in my element. Amongst all the cat pictures, figurines, home items, costumes, and anything else you can think of, are real cats living amongst all the displays – they were too quick for me to get a photo as some annoying tourists ahead of us kept trying to touch them.

The oldest item in the museum is a cat mummy from ancient Egypt. It is from the collection of Pierre Loti who was a 19th century writer, naval officer, and a world traveller. I think he probably added the ribbon around the neck as I’m not sure the Egyptians were into bows.

Here you can see part of one of the rooms – there’s even a cat climbing up the side of the large mirror.

In the backyard were loads of advertising boards which showed all the different ways that cats have been featured in branding and trying to sell things.

On one of the sideboards were notes that people had left about cats, and I love the one that is on top (not that I would ever say that).

Here’s a few more shots from around the museum for you to enjoy.

As with any good museum there is a gift shop and I wanted to buy all of these books. There were cat themed bags, clothes, ornaments, and lots of posters.

The below two pictures show the contrasts of culture that you find in Amsterdam perfectly. The first is a picture from the museum of Vladimir Lenin cuddling a cat, a photo that was taken by his sister. The second is a cat we encountered that was sat in the middle of one of Amsterdam’s many sex shops – Ken was concerned that the cat may get confused and think some of the items were cat toys.

What was the first thing we did when we’d finished exploring the lovely Katten Kabinet – you guessed it, time for coffee and cake. We found a lovely little cafe that was perfect for people watching and I had a giant chocolate peanut butter cup.