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There’s just something about cats. We own them, viralize them, buy sweaters and calendars and mugs with them on it. They are points of fascination and obsession. Even though the 21st century has rejected the superstitions of previous centuries, returning cats to the godhood of Ancient Egypt, we still recognize their power to suggest the dark side of nature. Outside cats leave their human’s property at dusk and venture out into the darkness, returning in the morning with the corpses of birds and rodents. They step out of the comfort zones of most humans, plumb the hours of night when humans feel most alone and vulnerable, and they own that space. Cats have featured heavily in horror fiction since the Middle Ages, and have inspired masters of the genre from Poe and Stoker to Lovecraft and Bierce, from Le Fanu and Chambers to Blackwood and Saki.

 

Cats’ role in supernatural fiction, horror, and folklore is likely due to their perceived liminality: they seem to be able to access an alternate plane of experience that is just outside of humans’ comfort zone. They venture into the murky, liminal spaces of life – the spaces where we are afraid to go alone, too big to fit, too high to climb, and to dark to see. Can a more fitting metaphor for the afterlife – for magic, for the spiritual, for the unknown – possibly be concocted? The stories contained in this book are among the most famous felines in literature. We will explore this side of the cat as well as its darker connotations. There are stories of ghost cats, battered felines getting gruesome revenge, speaking animals, messengers from the afterlife, feline royalty, shape-shifting were-cats, and much more. It’s the purrrfect companion for a dark and windy night.

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The Cats – H. P. Lovecraft                                                                          

 

— PURRING GHOSTS —

TALES OF SPECTRAL FELINES

[Excerpts from Elliott O’Donnell’s Animal Ghosts]

 

The Haunted Manor House                                                         

The Mystic Properties of Cats                                                    

The Cat on a Post                                                                           

The Headless Cat                                                                            

Some Ghost Cats                                                                             

 

— FELINE REVENGE—

TALES OF BATTERED CATS BITING BACK

 

Tailypo – Appalachian Folktale                           

The Cathood of Maurice – E. Nesbit                           

The Cats of Ulthar – H. P. Lovecraft                      

The Squaw – Bram Stoker                                           

The Black Cat – Edgar Allan Poe                            

The Enchanted Cat of Bantry – Irish Folktale      

 

— CREEPY KITTIES —

TALES OF STRANGE CATS FROM DARK REALMS

 

The White Cat of Drumgunniol – J. S. Le Fanu           

The Street of the Four Winds – R. W. Chambers          

The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral – M. R. James            

The Repairer of Reputations – R. W. Chambers          

Excerpts from The Dream-Quest

of Unknown Kadath – H. P. Lovecraft       

The Boarded Window – Ambrose Bierce                  

 

 

—TRANSFIGURING TOMS —

TALES OF SHAPESHIFTING CATS

 

Ancient Sorceries – Algernon Blackwood             

Eyes of the Panther – Ambrose Bierce                        

The Cat – E. F. Benson                                                    

The Gray Cat – Barry Pain                                                 

Lord Peter – Norwegian Folktale                           

Excerpts from Carmilla – J. Sheridan Le Fanu         

 

— IT’S REIGNING CATS —

TALES OF CATS IN CHARGE AND FELINE FRIENDS

 

The King of the Cats – British Folktale                 

Puss in Boots – Charles Perrault                         

Sir Walter Scott’s Cat – Washington Irving         

The Paradise of Cats – Émile Zola                                    

Tobermory – Saki                                                                   

The Colony of Cats – Andrew Lang                                  

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