Skimbleshanks would later become the title of Lloyd-Webber's next musical. "Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat" (poem) 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
The King of the Cats tale several times. In John Crowley's 1987 novel "The Solitudes", "The King of the Cats" is explicitly related to "the Death of Pan" as recorded by Plutarch and interpreted by St. Augustine of Hippo as a shift in World Ages. "King o'Kats" was a single on the 1992 album "Supernatural" by The 360's. "The King of the Cats" is referenced, with slight changes, in Diane Duane's 1993 "Young Wizards" novel, "A Wizard Abroad". Henry Louis Gates wrote a profile of Albert Murray in "The New Yorker" 8 April 1996 entitled "King of Cats". China Miéville takes the idea of a