The cat in the Amsterdam window

Click on the image to enlarge it. (Don Dale photo, 2006)

For indoor cats, windows rate right up there with catnip. The experience of surveying the world from a windowsill is endlessly fascinating. The position is high and defensible -- important considerations if you're a cat. And the view is great.

This particular cat, name unknown, was settled in for the duration on a windowsill in the center of Amsterdam on a mild late-spring day in 2006. I was struck by his remarkable good looks, due in no small part to his unusual muted-calico coat. After a long stare establishing his clear superiority, he returned to studying the streetscape, ignoring me as I took a couple of digital images.

There was a lot for him to see and hear from his perch. The street was not a busy one, but there were couples walking, a few holding hands, laughing. Here and there were lone pedestrians, headed home or back to work after running errands, plastic shopping bags in hand.

Two doors down was one of Amsterdam's "coffee shops," the Kadinsky, where the menu doesn't list cappuccinos, mocha frappes and lattes. Usually posted just outside the front door, these coffee-shop menus catalog a wide range of marijuana varieties. The shops sell rolling papers too, but frequent visitors often bring their own pipes. There are a few tables inside where customers can enjoy their purchases, and on a warm day, there might be tables on the sidewalk.

If what you really want in Amsterdam is a cup of coffee, go to a café, not a coffee shop.

Across the street and a few doors down was a nondescript bar in a boxy brick building with a rainbow flag flying above the door. The windows were open but the place was quiet. The establishment would no doubt provide much more visual entertainment after dark for the windowsill cat.

A man in a green jacket caught the cat's eye halfway down the block. He had twirled a rack of souvenir postcards outside a neighborhood market. He took his time thinking about his selections. The cat quickly lost interest.

Two teenagers wearing orange shirts did bicycle tricks in the street near the man picking out postcards. One of them was skilled at executing wheelies, and their laughter underscored the street's soundscape. The cat was ignoring them, as though the boys had been at it for some time and no longer merited his interest.

Noon arrived, and the bells of the Westerkerk punctuated the soundscape from a block away. During World War II, Anne Frank could hear the chimes every quarter hour from her family's attic hiding place nearby. She told her diary that the bells sounded reassuring, especially at night. The cat took no notice of the familiar sound.

The cat yawned and stretched and settled back in to watch a man across the street who was staring into a shop. The sign in the plate glass window said Tibet Winkel/Stitching/Tibet Support Group Nederland. From the outside it looked like a specialty bookstore. Haphazard stacks of reading material were visible through the window.

Next door was an art and interior design boutique. In the front window was a large abstract drawing that seemed to be about man's essential isolation.

And the cat with the pale calico coat watched from his windowsill, still and silent and fascinated, as the day unfolded.