The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten.Ĭats play a prominent role in the writings of H. He is the kin of the jungle's lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroë and Ophir. Fix yourself a lovely cup of hot tea, pull your cat close, and settle in for a story.For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. This story is very short, and since it has now fallen into Public Domain, the whole story is read in this episode.Īnd now, I can hear my tea kettle. Meditation and prayer so strong it reshapes the clouds in the sky, and changes the cats, the people, and the town of Ulthar forever.
When the kitten goes missing, and Menes hears of the possibility of its cruel death by a mean, curmudgeon’d old couple that killed cats, he begins a meditation that gives way into prayer. As in Ulthar, the ancient Egyptians were admirers of cats, and made it a crime to kill or export any cat. One of the main characters in this story, the young boy Menes, shares his name with Menes, the mythical founder of the ancient city of Memphis, Egypt. The exact way this story took form in his head is unclear, but it does have influences from a writer friend he admired, the Anglo-Irish Lord Dunsany- and of course it was also influenced by cats in ancient Egypt. And here-100 years later, I get to present it to you-in a podcast. Lovecraft outlined the plot to this story in May 1920, and wrote the short story June 15, 1920. The Cats of Ulthar tells the story of how a law forbidding the killing of cats came to be in a town called Ulthar. He believed that cats innately possess what human beings lack. He referred to cats as cool, lithe, cynical, and an unconquered lord of the housetops. It has been written that he seemed to have taken greater pleasure in the company of Cats than of humans. He wrote his first story at the age of fourteen. Lovecraft was an almost recluse that specialized in the macabre with tales of science-fiction, horror, and the gothic. That would be Howard Phillips Lovecraft, born 1890, died 1937.
“Even when little Atal, the innkeeper’s son, vowed that he had at twilight seen all the cats of Ulthar in that accursed yard under the trees, pacing very slowly and solemnly in a circle around the cottage, two abreast, as if in performance of some unheard-of rite of beasts,” That’s a quote from The Cats of Ulthar by H.P.
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