July 2018 - Traveling Cats - Travel Pictures of Cats

Look beyond the mountain views, hiking routes, chocolate, and cuckoo clocks. The small village of Gimmelwald in the Canton of Bern in Switzerland is all about... cats.

Gimmelwald hangs on the edge of a cliff, high above the Lauterbrunnen Valley, and is inaccessible by car because there is no road connection. Therefore, it is one of Switzerland's best-kept secrets.

With just over one hundred inhabitants, one wouldn't expect to see many felines in this place. But don't be mistaken; cats are almost everywhere you go in this sleepy village.

One of Gimmelwald's cats even managed to become an international news item, when a hiker got lost in the mountains, and the nifty little "guide" showed him the way back to civilization. You can read this cat's full story and see pictures here.

Cat pictures by Matthew Craven

“The ancient Egyptians did everything to make their cats happy,” writes Annemarie Schimmel in the book Cairo Cats: Egypt's Enduring Legacy. “They were groomed and bathed, anointed with fragrant oils, and of course fed with excellent food for a cat's life was as important as a human life, and even during famines some food was apportioned to cats.”

In Egypt it was not unknown for someone who killed a cat to be executed or, if he happened to be caught in the act, lynched by the furious masses.

Today, as these photographs prove, the mystique of the cat is still very much alive in the Egyptian environment.