November 9, 1620

The passengers aboard the Mayflower sighted the land that we now call Cape Cod on November 9, 1620. The passengers included "one or two cats." We learn this from a book titled Everything Cats Expect You to Know.(2007) The author, Elizabeth Martyn has a series of popular interest books about cats, and there is no need to expect any of them are well-researched. There is no reason to doubt her information about the Mayflower though, or her assertion that the Mayflower cats arrived after the Jesuits brought cats to what we now consider Quebec in the 1500s.