Personal blog about creative writing, Beginner's Latin, Discordianism, mythology, Vaporwave, H.P. Lovecraft, and more.
Ailuromancy (that's Cat Magic to ya!)
“For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroe and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle’s lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. 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.”
This resides in the opening paragraph of H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Cats of Ulthar’. To some this would be obvious, for the plodding prose and oft-archaic words mirror his style to the letter. The Pedia Of Wikis gives Lord Dunsany as a major influence, citing the same prose as well as a ‘vengeance motif’ underpinning the story. Yours truly is yet to read any of Dunsany’s work, but he assures you that it is high on his list.
The third leg, for any Lovecraft fanatics out there, is of course the preoccupation with cats. Howard Philips Lovecraft was known as an ailurophile, featuring the odd feline in a tale. This surfaced most controversially in ‘The Rats in the Walls’, in which a certain cat has a name that shall not be discussed here.
Ahem. I believe the smarties call that one ‘paralipsis’. Moving on.
Another moment is notable for the bizarrerie that it is. In ‘The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’, the narrator is captured by what appear to be space-pirates and ported to the moon. He is subsequently saved by multiple fields-worth of cats, who jump from up from Dream-Earth and rain down upon his oppressors. They are themselves sentient and organised into an army, with terms such as ‘general’ and ‘soldier’ sprinkled in to remind the readers. The cat-army tears about the ugly moon-monsters and transport the narrator back.
He falls back down to Earth swaddled in cats to protect his landing. Yep.
This all may appear strange. Believe me, it is. What isn’t strange however is the allure of cats to someone like Lovecraft. We all know that introverts are drawn to cats, which still rang true nearly a century ago. He was a recluse throughout his life, from his homeschooled nonage to a nocturnal adulthood during which he rarely promoted his own stories. His attitude towards cats is more or less summarised in the above quote. They are mysterious; they are closer to a second reality than us; they were worshipped in Ancient Egypt; and so on. I myself maintain this view. What does a cat’s dream look like? Where do they scurry off to? And what do they sense?
To gain some insight, I looked into David Teie’s ‘Music for Cats’ collection, which is exactly what it says on the tin. I tried playing some to Lolly and Cinderella, but they didn’t react. Let me know if you have better luck!
The idea that humans are barred from greater understanding due to simple senses is another feature of Lovecraft’s, manifest in “From Beyond”. To no coincidence, it is one of my favourites. The allure of the cat is likely similar, and I look forward to incorporating similar ideas in my writing. Just where do they skulk off to, exactly?



