Amsterdam Is Installing Tiny Staircases for Cats, and It Is the Cutest Thing Ever
Amsterdam’s canals are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but they come with a real safety problem that keeps resurfacing in a particularly awful way. In the last six months, 19 cats drowned in the city’s canals, according to Dierenambulance Amsterdam, and six of those deaths happened in the city center. Cats can swim, but that doesn’t make canals safe.
Maggie Ruitenberg of the Feline Information Center, Katten Kenniscentrum, has explained that cats tire quickly in water because their fur becomes heavy once it’s soaked. In other words, the danger is less about the first splash and more about what happens when the animal can’t find an exit point. City officials have now approved up to €100,000 to tackle the issue, and the plan hinges on a simple idea that sounds almost too small to matter until you hear why it does.
A Vote, A Budget, And A Specific Trigger
Momentum built through the Party for the Animals (PvdD), and on July 10, 2025, the Amsterdam City Council made it official. Members approved a motion to install wildlife exit points along canals in the city center, moving the idea from discussion to action.
The funding question, which had stalled things before, turned out to have a simple answer. The proposal identified an unused €100,000 set aside for biodiversity planning. That discovery removed the biggest obstacle and gave the plan a practical path forward.
The city’s councillor for animal welfare, Zita Pels, had already backed the idea but had been clear that there was no budget to support it. Once the money was accounted for, the council vote transformed general support into a concrete mandate to move ahead.
The Cute Part Is Also The Practical Part
Amsterdam plans to install tiny wooden staircases and escape steps along sections of the canals so cats and other small animals can climb out if they fall in. They work as an exit route in places where a slick wall turns a manageable problem into a deadly one. A small ladder changes the outcome, but only if it’s close enough to reach before exhaustion kicks in.
That’s why the rollout focuses on placement. Ruitenberg put it plainly: a ladder can save a cat’s life if there are enough of them. That “enough of them” part explains why Amsterdam is taking the next step seriously, rather than randomly placing a few and calling it a day.
How Amsterdam Plans To Place Them
Image via pexels/Deimantas Viburys
Amsterdam plans to work with Dierenambulance to identify where cats and other animals most often struggle to escape. The city will use those findings to select the highest-risk locations for the first installs. This approach also keeps the plan grounded.
The canals run all over the city, and the danger isn’t evenly distributed. A staircase won’t help if it’s installed far from the spots where animals actually fall in or where the walls are hardest to climb. The whole point is to shorten the distance between panic and an exit.
Amersfoort Has Already Tested The Idea
The nearby city of Amersfoort announced in June 2025 that it would install around 300 animal exit ladders and steps along its waterways. The purpose matched Amsterdam’s goal: to prevent drownings in areas with high quay walls where animals can’t climb out.
Amersfoort also described a collaborative setup that included the animal ambulance, a research agency, and residents identifying where the steps were needed. This is important because it shows this is a repeatable fix that cities can scale once they treat it like a safety network rather than a one-off build.