Subtitled: "They weren't just ship cats. New evidence suggests these felines played a surprising role in early American history."
My wife and I both had dogs and no cats for many decades. Our last old wienerdog died and we were heartbroken. A little more than a year later one of the stray cats that we put food out for decided to move in with us and take over the house.
He started out normal sized, but it turned out that he was actually still a kitten and he kept getting bigger and bigger. I thought that maybe we were feeding him too much. But the vet said that he was not fat; he is just a really big cat. He acts a lot like a dog and loves chasing down balls and especially playing “hockey” with milk jug and juice bottle caps.
I have always had allergy problems with cats and some dogs, but he does not bother me, other than he likes to cover my face when I am sleeping. When I wake up I often have fine cat fur stuck to my lips and in my nose. He is a super fluffy cat; a Siberian with three distinct layers of fur. He sheds so much that I purchased a Robo-vac for every level in our house. He likes to whack the robo-vacs and knock them off their base stations. Sometimes he “accidentally” pushes their go buttons and they vacuum the entire story.
Ghost Cats?
The Cat that could drive - Maritime version.
“”What was interesting, is that our cat was not eating the rats on board the ship but had a diet more in line with what we’d expect for the sailors.”...”
How do they know this? - Maybe the cats had already got the job done.....
Dogs were here first. They failed in getting rid of these foreign invaders.
If the bones were found in a shipwreck off shore then technically they didn’t make it to the mainland...
Lots more academic info on US cats and cats on general
Exploring the Arrival of Domestic Cats in the Americas
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/exploring-the-arrival-of-domestic-cats-in-the-americas/A3D8A7797C46D01175D545BBEFD76BFA
ALF loved cats.
Changed everything? This is huge! So may questions, Does this mean that the pyramids actually weren't made by aliens like we always knew they were? Was Jesus actually French? McDonalds is actually health food?
May have been used for rat control on the ships….
I don't think there is any evidence one way or the other about the Norse explorers who reached North America having any cats on board.