#hpl

See, Tolkien originally envisionied what once should become the dark lord Sauron to be a cat named Tevildo who's prideful and cunning and wicked, loving to play with his prey and being named the chief hunter of what essentially is The Devil in Tolkien's writings.

To quote Tolkien in his own words: "[Tevildo] was a mighty cat and coal-black and evil to look upon. His eyes were long and very narrow and slanted, and gleamed both red and green, but his great grey whiskers were as stout and as sharp as needles. His purr was like the roll of drums and his growl like thunder, but when he yelled in wrath it turned the blood cold, and indeed small beasts and birds were frozen as to stone, or dropped lifeless often at the very sound."

On the other hand, Lovecraft adored cats. So much so that he granted them the power to see the invisible in many of his works, while also making them strong, agile, able to leap between earth and moon, saving the protagonist of one of his Dream Cycle stories and he even wrote at least two poems for cats. As christmas presents.

So I imagine Tolkien ranting about how cats are cruel and vicious predators with zero regards to life itself and servants of the Dark Lord, and Lovecraft freaking out, telling Tolkien to shup up because one time there were those people in a town called Ulthar who didn't like cats and treated them badly and these people were evil and one day the cats ate the people, see, this is what you get for hating on my poor kittens!