Skimbleshanks Skimbleshanks Skimbleshanks is a cat character in T. S. Eliot's book of poetry "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" and in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "Cats". The T. S Eliot poem begins as a parody of Rudyard Kipling's poem "l'Envoi" (also known as "The Long Trail") from "Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses". Compare the first few lines of Kipling's Skimbleshanks is described as living on the Night Mail overnight express train that travels on the British West Coast Main Line (WCML) between London Euston and Glasgow Central. He is however not exclusively based on the WCML, as he has visited
The Cats of Ulthar outlined the plot to his friend Rheinhart Kleiner in May 1920 and wrote "The Cats of Ulthar" on June 15, 1920, five months after completing his previous tale, "The Terrible Old Man". Conceived during the author's early period, Lovecraft was influenced by the writing of Anglo-Irish writer Lord Dunsany and attempted to mimic his style. Among the literary aspects that Lovecraft borrows are the "vengeance motif" and the "ponderous tone" of Dunsany. Dunsany's influence is evident on the surface of the text as well: wanderers, similar to the ones portrayed in "The Cats of Ulthar", appear in Dunsany's earlier tale