H.P. Lovecraft: "The Cats of Ulthar" {read by Clark Pigeau}

"The Cats of Ulthar" is a short story written by American fantasy author H. P. Lovecraft in June 1920. In the tale, an unnamed narrator relates the story of how a law forbidding the killing of cats came to be in a town called Ulthar. The tale was a personal favorite of Lovecraft's and has remained popular since his death. Considered one of the best short stories of Lovecraft's early period, aspects of "The Cats of Ulthar" would be referenced again in the author's works "The Other Gods" and "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath".
Lovecraft outlined the plot to his friend Rheinhart Kleiner in May 1920 and wrote it on June 15, 1920, five months after completing his previous tale, "The Terrible Old Man". Conceived during the author's early period, Lovecraft was influenced by the writing of Anglo-Irish writer Lord Dunsany and attempted to mimic his style. Among the literary aspects that Lovecraft borrows are the "vengeance motif" and the "ponderous tone" of Dunsany. Dunsany's influence is evident on the surface of the text as well: wanderers, similar to the ones portrayed in here, appear in Dunsany's earlier tale "Idle Days on the Yann". Lovecraft's character of Menes shares his name with Menes, the semi-mythical founder of the ancient city of Memphis, Egypt. The ancient Egyptians were admirers of cats who made it a crime to kill or export felines.
Prior to this story, Lovecraft had penned several tales in the style of Lord Dunsany, including "The White Ship", "The Street", "The Doom that Came to Sarnath", "The Terrible Old Man", and "The Tree". His next Dunsanian tale, "Celephaïs", was considered by Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi to be "one of his best and most significant".
This story was a personal favorite of Lovecraft's, who was an ardent cat lover. A number of contemporary critics, as well as Lovecraft himself, consider the story to be the best of all his Dunsanian tales. Other critics have noted that the story is one of Lovecraft's most famous tales that fits both the Dunsanian and the "weird fantasy" style. Literary critic Darrell Schweitzer, however, comments that "The Cats of Ulthar" resembles Dunsany in "mood and execution" only and that "[it] has no obvious parallels in any Dunsany story". Schweitzer refers to the prose as "restrained", and notes that, unlike Lovecraft, Dunsany preferred dogs and would have been unlikely to have written such an enthusiastic tribute. Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi disagrees, claiming that "[t]his tale owes more to Dunsany than many of his other 'Dunsanian' fantasies".
The character of Atal, the innkeeper's son who witnesses the cats of Ulthar circling the antagonists' cottage, would later appear in Lovecraft's "The Other Gods". Here, as in others of Lovecraft's later tales, cats embody the attraction to horror while, unlike the human protagonists, "never pursuing horror to the point of becoming horrible themselves".
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(Voice Recording):
*read for Clark Pigeau
LibriVox (Short Ghost and Horror Collection 039)
librivox.org/s...
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(Music):
"Lasting Hope", "Mysterioso March" &"The Willow and the Light"
by Kevin MacLeod (www.incompetech.com)
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommon...
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(WikiCommons Photos):
"Four_cats-N3910-P5260390-gradient"
"Box_for_animal_mummy_surmounted_by_a_cat,_inscribed_MET_LC-12_182_27_EGDP023739"
"Box_for_animal_mummy_surmounted_by_a_cat,_inscribed_MET_LC-12_182_27_EGDP023744"
"Box_for_animal_mummy_surmounted_by_a_cat,_inscribed_MET_LC-12_182_27_EGDP023745"
"Cat_hunting-E_13245IMG_4533-gradient"
"Cat_Statuette_intended_to_contain_a_mummified_cat_MET_DP245141"
by Rama (CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)
"Bastet_dame_katzenkopf"
by Kotofeij K. Bajun (CC Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
"Minnakht_01"
by Anonymous (CC Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
"Bronze_Saite_era_art_of_an_Egyptian_cat_in_the_Gulbenkian_Museum"
by www.flickr.com... (CC Attribution 2.0 Generic)
"Xviii_dinastia,_rilievi_di_merymery,_da_sakkara,_1350_ac_ca._11_gatto"
by Sailko (CC Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0))
"Sarcophagus_of_Prince_Thutmose's_cat_by_Madam_Rafaèle"
by Lazaroni (CC Attribution 2.0 Generic)
"British_Museum_Egypt_101-black"
by Einsamer Schultze (CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)
"Cat_Killing_a_Serpent_MET_eg30.4.1"
by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
"Two_cats_surmounting_a_box_for_an_animal_mummy_MET_04.2.601_EGDP014448"
by Gustavo Campos (CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)
"Cat_with_Kittens,_ca._664-30_B.C.E._or_later"
by The Brooklyn Museum (CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)
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[@c.pigeau7469]

Heh, caught me off guard to see this here, hope you enjoyed it!

[@christophermacintyre5890]

I did. Your performance has a very droll, humorous quality which fits this particular story very well.