“A Cat’s Tale: How Domestic Cats Came to the Americas” Presentation
September 18 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
On September 18, 2025, join Old Pueblo Archaeology Center’s “Third Thursday Food for Thought” program featuring the presentation “A Cat’s Tale: How Domestic Cats Came to the Americas” by archaeologist Martin H. Welker, Ph.D. This free online Zoom program will be held from 7:00-8:30 pm, ARIZONA/Mountain Standard Time (same as Pacific Daylight Time).
The domestic cat (Felis catus) is both one of the most popular pets and companion animals, and one of the least studied domesticated animals. Cats are variably portrayed as cute and fuzzy pets, lauded for their effectiveness as mousers, or vilified for their role in the decline and extinction of small native species. Despite their popularity and impacts on human society, they have received relatively limited study by archaeologists. In many ways, this likely reflects cats’ own independence and solitary nature. For much of human-cat coexistence, cats have been left to their own devices, hunting the mice and rats drawn to human settlements at will. As sailors began undertaking longer and longer voyages, they came to rely on cats to keep down the mice and rats aboard ships. Because of this, cats were likely one of the earliest Eurasian domesticates to catch sight of the New World. In this lecture we will explore the domestication of cats in the Near East, their spread in Europe, and their arrival in the New World. Dr. Martin Welker is the Associate Curator of Zooarchaeology for the Arizona State Museum and an Associate Professor in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona.
To register for the Zoom webinar go to https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QnAgXGbISwumggNu8TEa1A. For more information contact Old Pueblo at info@oldpueblo.org or 520-798-1201.
Flyer: 20250918(v1)ThirdThursday_MartinWelker_How Domestic Cats Came to the Americas
Caption: “Kitty on a Galleon” doctored photo of a segment of Cornelis Verbeeck’s 1650 painting “A Naval Encounter between Dutch and Spanish Warships” in the National Gallery of Art