"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. As the narrative goes, the city is home to an old couple who enjoy capturing and killing the townspeople's cats. When a caravan of wanderers passes through the city, the kitten of an orphan (Menes) traveling with the band disappears. Upon hearing of the couple's violent acts towards cats, Menes invokes a prayer before leaving town that causes the local felines to swarm the cat-killers' house and devour them. Upon witnessing the result, the local politicians pass a law forbidding the killing of cats.
60 Gothic Classics : Exploring the Haunting Depths of Classic Gothic Literature
Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, William Hope Hodgson, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Anna Katharine Green, George MacDonald, Bram Stoker, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, William Godwin, Henry James, Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, John Meade Falkner, George Eliot, Robert Hugh Benson, Horace Walpole, Frederick Marryat, Thomas Love Peacock, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gaston Leroux, Grant Allen, Arthur Machen, Wilkie Collins, Thomas Peckett Prest, James Malcolm Rymer, Charles Brockden Brown, James Hogg, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Richard Marsh, Charles Robert Maturin, John William Polidori, H. G. Wells, W. Jacobs, H. P. Lovecraft, William Thomas Beckford, Nikolai Gogol, Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Fitz-James O'Brien, Eliza Parsons
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The Call of Cthulhu (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 43)
H. P. Lovecraft
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Cool Air (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 42)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Descendant (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 41)
H. P. Lovecraft
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In the Vault (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 40)
H. P. Lovecraft
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He (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 39)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Horror at Red Hook (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 38)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Shunned House (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 37)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Festival (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 36)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Unnamable (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 35)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Rats in the Walls (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 34)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Lurking Fear (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 33)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Tomb (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 1)
H. P. Lovecraft
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Dagon (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 2)
H. P. Lovecraft
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Polaris (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 3)
H. P. Lovecraft
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Beyond the Wall of Sleep (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 4)
H. P. Lovecraft
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Memory (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 5)
H. P. Lovecraft
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Old Bugs (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 6)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Transition of Juan Romero (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 7)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The White Ship (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 8)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Doom That Came to Sarnath (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 9)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Statement of Randolph Carter (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 10)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Terrible Old Man (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 11)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Tree (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 12)
H. P. Lovecraft
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