Kattenkabinet Amsterdam

The Kattenkabinet Amsterdam, or Cat Cabinet, is an art museum in Amsterdam with one subject: cats. It fills the lower floors of a 17th-century canal house on the Golden Bend, the grandest stretch of the Herengracht, and as far as I know there is nothing else quite like it anywhere.

⤷ Looking for more cats in Amsterdam? You’ll like my article: Cats in Amsterdam

If you love cats, this is 45 of the best-spent minutes in the city. If cats are not your thing, spend your museum time elsewhere; the collection will not convert you. And if you are somewhere in between, come for the house and stay for the five cats who live here.

Images I took at the Cat Cabinet in Amsterdam – © Hidden Holland

The Cat Behind the Museum

Bob Meijer shared 17 years of his life with a red tomcat named John Pierpont Morgan, after the American banker. When Morgan died in 1983, Meijer eventually turned the lower floors of the family’s canal house into a museum in his memory. It opened in 1990, and it still feels much more like a personal collection than an institution.

The Meijer family lives upstairs to this day. So when you visit, you are a guest in someone’s house in the most literal sense, and the museum feels that way: creaking floors, grand rooms, and cats that clearly consider you the visitor.

What You’ll See Inside

The collection covers roughly five centuries of cats in art: paintings, drawings, posters, sculpture, and the odd curiosity. The names are bigger than you’d expect from a museum this size. There are works by Pablo Picasso, Théophile Steinlen, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, hanging next to Dutch cat specialists like Sal Meijer. If you like Paris around 1900, the Steinlen poster art alone justifies the ticket.

My favorite detail is the cloakroom hands you a cat’s paw as your coat check tag. And then there are the five house cats, who wander the rooms as if the art were hung for them.

A House With Stories of Its Own

The building is a monument in its own right. It was build in 1667 for two brothers of the Van Loon family, and the ballroom keeps its ceiling painting from 1670. The rooms still feel like the private mansion this was for three centuries, which is a rarity: most Golden Bend houses are now banks and offices you cannot enter.

Did you know John Adams visited this house before he became the second US president, back when he was in the Netherlands winning support for the young United States. It’s wasn’t a cat museum then, but still, pretty cool. And in 2004 the museum was a filming location for Ocean’s Twelve, so the rooms may look familiar the moment you walk in.

My Tips for Visiting the Kattenkabinet

The museum opens at noon, Tuesday through Sunday, and closes at 5 p.m.; Monday it stays shut. If you have a choice, time your visits for noon. The cats are at their most active right after their morning nap, and you often have the rooms nearly to yourself. Come back through the ballroom before you leave: on sunny afternoons the cats stretch out right under that 1670 ceiling.

Plan 45 to 60 minutes inside, but you might want to stay longer. Tickets are €12.50, kids under 12 enter free, and entry is included with the I amsterdam Card; if you plan more museums that day, check whether the card saves you money.

If you want the museum truly to yourself, there is a guided cat tour on Tuesday at 11 a.m., an hour before the doors open: English only, 2 to 8 people, bookable by email only (het.kattenkabinet@gmail.com).