Secrets Beneath the Waves: How a 1559 Shipwreck Revealed North America’s First Domestic Cats
The History Of Domestic Cats In The New World
Cats, like many other domesticated animals, made their way to the New World on European ships. However, it wasn’t clear when exactly the first felines were introduced to North America.
According to this latest study, cats had spread from the Middle East to the Mediterranean basin by 400 B.C.E. and were then introduced to the Canary Islands around the 15th century to help control rodent and rabbit populations, but there was never any clear, direct link between either of these cat populations and domestic cats in the Americas.
Some have suggested cats could have been on board Christopher Columbus’ ships, but there are no records to confirm this. There is documentation of cat remains in the Caribbean starting around 1492. Domestic cats may have also been transported from the Canary Islands to La Isabela in the Dominican Republic, the first Spanish settlement and town in the Americas, in 1493. Evidence of cats in what is now Haiti also supports the claim that Columbus had cats aboard his ship.
University of British Columbia Library Special CollectionsShip’s cats remained common throughout the 20th century. Pictured here is Captain A. J. Hailey and his cat on the RMS Empress of Canada around 1920.
Columbus never stepped foot on the mainland of North America, though.
However, in 2006, researchers found the remains of two domestic cats among the wreckage of a ship that sank off the coast of Florida in September 1559. The vessel, Emanuel Point II, had been part of a colonization expedition led by Spanish conquistador Tristán de Luna y Arellano when it was destroyed by a hurricane while anchored in Pensacola Bay.
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