So the boy whom the dark people called Menes smiled more often than he wept as he sat playing with his graceful kitten on the steps of an oddly painted wagon.

The plague had not been kind to him, yet had left him this small furry thing to mitigate his sorrow and when one is very young, one can find great relief in the lively antics of a black kitten. There was in this singular caravan a little boy with no father or mother, but only a tiny black kitten to cherish. What was the land of these wanderers none could tell but it was seen that they were given to strange prayers and that they had painted on the sides of their wagons strange figures with human bodies and the heads of cats, hawks, rams and lions. In the market-place they told fortunes for silver, and bought gay beads from the merchants. Dark wanderers they were, and unlike the other roving folk who passed through the village twice every year. One day a caravan of strange wanderers from the South entered the narrow cobbled streets of Ulthar. When through some unavoidable oversight a cat was missed, and sounds heard after dark, the loser would lament impotently or console himself by thanking Fate that it was not one of his children who had thus vanished. In truth, much as the owners of cats hated these odd folk, they feared them more instead of berating them as brutal assassins. But the villagers did not discuss such things with the old man and his wife because of the habitual expression on the withered faces of the two, and because their cottage was so small and so darkly hidden under spreading oaks at the back of a neglected yard. But whatever the reason, this old man and woman took pleasure in trapping and slaying every cat which came near to their hovel.

In Ulthar, before ever the burgesses forbade the killing of cats, there dwelt an old cotter and his wife who delighted to trap and slay the cats of their neighbours. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten. He is the kind of the jungles lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroe and Ophir. For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon.

The cats of ulthar