Martha Curtis
Nestled in the waterways of Amsterdam is a unique animal sanctuary called ‘De Poezenboot’, or The Catboat in English. It’s the world’s only floating cat sanctuary, offering a safe place for up to 250 cats each year, with 50 residents at any one time. The sanctuary was founded in 1966 by Henriette van Weelde, after she found a family of cats living under a tree opposite her house on the Herengracht canal. She took the feline family in, and other stray cats started to arrive. Soon after, people started to bring in animals that they could no longer care for, and Henriette became known as ‘the cat lady’, because of her dedication to looking after the animals.