H. P. Lovecraft was one of the great cat-lovers in history. In his youth he was devoted to his beloved black cat, but when it ran away in 1904 he never owned a pet again. Thereafter he expressed his affection for felines in writing—in stories such as “The Cats of Ulthar” and “The Rats in the Walls”; in a wide range of poems, from “Sir Thomas Tryout” to “Little Sam Perkins”; and in the essay “Cats and Dogs,” in which he definitively establishes the total superiority of cats over dogs (“The dog is a peasant and the cat is a gentleman”). This book gathers together the entirety of Lovecraft’s writings on cats for the first time. As a special bonus, it includes extracts from dozens of Lovecraft’s published and unpublished letters, where he discusses such topics as Old Man (an incredibly ancient cat he encountered while walking the streets of Providence, R.I.); the pets of his friends and colleagues, including Clark Ashton Smith and E. Hoffmann Price; the many cats of the “Kappa Alpha Tau” fraternity near his house at 66 College Street; and many other subjects. 

The book has been assembled by S. T. Joshi, a leading authority on Lovecraft. And it is lavishly illustrated by Jason C. Eckhardt, whose artwork has graced Lovecraftian publications for decades. 

Contents 

Introduction by S. T. Joshi 

The Cats of Ulthar 

Sir Thomas Tryout 

The Rats in the Walls 

The Cats 

In Memoriam: Oscar Incoul Verelst of Manhattan 

Cats and Dogs 

From The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath 

Veteropinguis Redivivus 

[To a Cat] 

[Little Sam Perkins] 

[Christmas Greetings] (five poems) 

The Cats of New York (excerpts from 21 letters) 

Old Man (longer excerpt from one letter) 

The Kappa Alpha Tau (excerpts from 34 letters including “[Anthem of the Kappa Alpha Tau]”) 

Musings of an Ailurophile (excerpts from four letters to Marian F. Bonner) 

Extracts from Letters (excerpts from 50 letters) 

Felis: A Prose Poem by Frank Belknap Long