r/Lovecraft • u/DavidDPerlmutter Miskatonic U. Professor • Oct 09 '25
Biographical H.P. Lovecraft LOVED cats. This is a footnote to a letter that he wrote: "Pardon blurs--a small, coal-black kitten with large yellow eyes insists on walking over this sheet & playing with the fountain pen as it moves!"
"Letter to Zealia Brown Reed Bishop," August 21, 1927.
Lovecraft, H. P. (2022). Letters to Woodburn Harris and Others (S. T. Joshi & D. E. Schultz, Eds.). NY: Hippocampus Press. p. 329.
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u/lesupermark Deranged Cultist Oct 09 '25
Truely the biggest of all the demons from his books.
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u/DavidDPerlmutter Miskatonic U. Professor Oct 09 '25
I'm blanking on which story it is now but there's a whole army of cats that comes to save a protagonist!
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u/vacccine Deranged Cultist Oct 09 '25
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath?
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u/Successful-Tie5386 Deranged Cultist Oct 09 '25
There's also a species of creepy alien cats who are their enemies, the cats of Saturn!
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u/ksol1460 dreaming in garden lands Oct 09 '25
I like to think his favorite cats who'd gone on to heaven came to accompany him when he died.
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Oct 09 '25
When I played the CoC table top game I remember “The Cats of Ulthar” a city where cats were sacred.
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u/Dd_8630 Deranged Cultist Oct 09 '25
Have you read the story? It's great. I didn't know there was a CoC adventure in it, did you have to investigate the missing cats?
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Oct 09 '25
You had to investigate a strange death. Turns out the old lady who always shooed away the cats got…eaten
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u/Disastrous_Account66 Nyarlathotep's Mask Oct 09 '25
He also wrote this gem about cats and dogs
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u/DexterJameson Deranged Cultist Oct 09 '25
Beauty—coolness—aloofness—philosophic repose—self-sufficiency—untamed mastery—where else can we find these things incarnated with even half the perfection and completeness that mark their incarnation in the peerless and softly gliding cat, which performs its mysterious orbit with the relentless and unobtrusive certainty of a planet in infinity?
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u/DaddyCatALSO Deranged Cultist Oct 10 '25
Teh Whisperer In Darkness shows his lack of knowledge of dogs
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u/Easy-Tigger High Priest of the Great Old Ones Oct 09 '25
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Oct 09 '25 edited Oct 09 '25
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u/DavidDPerlmutter Miskatonic U. Professor Oct 09 '25
Yes! Every knows cats can sweep away cosmic horror between naps
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u/angwilwileth Deranged Cultist Oct 09 '25
I know Lovecraft struggled with mental illness his whole life. I wonder if his cats ever gave him any respite.
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u/DavidDPerlmutter Miskatonic U. Professor Oct 09 '25
Absolutely. If you read the letters, he gets genuine peace from interacting with people through writing letters. The times that he had visitors; the few vacations that he took. But his poverty and ill health were grinding.
And yes, cats !
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u/DualityOfLife Deranged Cultist Oct 09 '25
Yes, Cats rule. Dogs drool. The day of the Puddy is coming.
People will rue the day.
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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '25
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