Bern Residents Take Excellent Care Of Their Cats, And The City’s Cat Ladders Have Become A Tourist Attraction

Brigitte Schuster, a graphic designer and writer, records this phenomenon in her new book Swiss Cat Ladders.

Damjan

• Published in Animals
• September 22, 2021

Cats are wonderful and athletic creatures. They are strong and agile, ideal for performing fantastic acrobatics. They certainly don’t need our help when navigating dangerous structures (trees not included), but making it easier on them can’t hurt.

The residents of Bern, Switzerland, take good care of their cats and want to make moving around easier on them, but in a way that would improve their safety without making them lazy and bored. That’s why the city’s buildings are riddled with cat ladders.

They resemble fire ladders but are much smaller. They are attached to the outer walls and, besides creating safe paths for cats, also form an attractive image for tourists.

Brigitte Schuster, a graphic designer and writer, records this phenomenon in her new book Swiss Cat Ladders.

An average adult cat can jump five to six times its height, roughly 4-5 feet.

Of course, there are exceptions

During one study, cats have been recorded jumping up to seven or eight times their height.

Guinness Book of World Records says that the longest horizontal jump by a cat was 7 feet.

It is held by Waffle, the Warrior Cat from the U.S.

Wonder how he would do here?

Getting ready

Looks like great fun

Damjan