We’re back and we’re chasing our tails, trying to lick our nether regions and hissing at anyone who looks at us funny. Meow. This is our look into the role of cats in Call of Cthulhu. Lovecraft was famously fond of cats. He kept them as pets throughout his life, and wrote about their exploits in his letters and stories. Inevitably, this means that cats have found their way into Call of Cthulhu. As any cat owner will tell you, cats can turn up in the most unexpected places. I regularly had to rescue one of mine from up the living room chimney.
Although most of them have had the decency to stay out of my skull.
Main Topic
We kick off by looking at cats in Lovecraft’s work. Along with his fiction, we find inky pawprints in his poetry, essays and correspondence. The main works we discuss are:
When researching this episode, we were surprised to realise that the goddess Bast does not actually appear in Lovecraft’s fiction. He mentions the city of Bubastis in passing, but its patron deity is merely name-checked in Cats and Dogs. Her presence in the Call of Cthulhu rulebook seems to owe more to Robert Bloch than Lovecraft. Even then, Bloch’s version of Bast is a very different creature, especially in The Brood of Bubastis. We discuss these variations and how they might influence our games.
Chaos tries to influence my games, usually by lying on my arms as I’m trying to write them.
Of course, we also look at Cats in Call of Cthulhu and some other Lovecraftian RPGs. There are a surprising number of games in which you can play a cat and fight eldritch horrors. We mention a few of them.
We also offer a few ideas about how you might use cats in your games. Personally, we let our feline friends bat our dice around the table whenever we need to roll. Paul’s cat, Ginnie, takes payment for this by drinking our tea, which seems a fair exchange.
News
All three of us managed to make it to Concrete Cow this time around and we even ran some games. In case you haven’t heard us mention it before, Concrete Cow is Milton Keynes’ own gaming convention, held twice a year in March and September. If you fancy coming along and joining one of our games there, the next one is scheduled for the 15th of September.
Other Stuff
Most of us have suffered cats yowling outside our windows at night. Their screeches can pierce the very soul, driving sleep far away, leaving only frustration and pain. Taking inspiration from these midnight serenades, we offer two new songs in this episode. These are our caterwauling way of saying thank you to those generous people who back us at the $5 level on Patreon. We have almost caught up with our backlog of people to sing to, so if you are still waiting, your torment is closer than you think.
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(I tried to leave this earlier – sorry if a double post)
The Cult of Bubastis and Cathulhu originally (in English at least) appeared in Worlds of Cthulhu #4.
We also had some cat and cat-adjacent material in Arkham Gazette #3, with an article on witches’ familiars (as well as rat-things, cat-things, etc) and a piece about “dried” cats, a practice where people would seal a dead cat in the walls or floors of a new building, supposedly as a ward against witches.http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/157349/The-Arkham-Gazette-3
Loved this episode, especially as a cat, well, can’t really say owner. They know who is in charge, and it’s clearly not myself nor my husband. Have to say, if anyone did anything bad to them, I would invoke the wrath of Bast.
As for the Cthulhu plushies, aw c’mon Scott, they’re adorable! I’m seriously tempted to try to crochet one.
Love the show. I’m going to have to re-listen for notes on movies, books, and TV shows. Have you guys done, or thought of doing a podcast with the three of you roleplaying table top campaigns?
Thank you for the humor and knowledge.