What does it change at all?
Cats have been part of eur civ for a long time.
Why is it a big deal that there were ship’s cats 🐈?
uuummmmmm... ...its saturday morning and someone is procrastinating their weekend projects and dilly dallying here on FR??
In other words pets not just animals that people tolerated.
There is a push currently to say that European people did not regard cats as pets generally until the 1800s when some artist started doing pictures of them. There was even a movie about it. Cute movie. Not accurate. But still cute.
This is proof that cats were pets long before that point. And during a time when, once more according to the latest historical fashion, when everyone in Europe was killing cats because they were "of the devil." While there may have been a few of those people, heck they are still around, this shows that among the most superstitious group in the area at the time cats were pets.