Grizabella like a crooked pin." The character of Grizabella featured in an unpublished poem that T. S. Eliot wrote for his godchildren, intending to include it in "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats". However, as his widow, Valerie Eliot pointed out, he thought it was too "sad for children" and so did not include it in the finished work. Valerie Eliot came to the 1980 Sydmonton Festival concert where Andrew Lloyd Webber premiered some of his settings of the Old Possum poems, and gave him the paper with the fragment of Grizabella written on it. From there Lloyd Webber and director
The Cats of Ulthar "Idle Days on the Yann". Lovecraft's character of Menes shares his name with Menes, the semi-mythical founder of the ancient city of Memphis, Egypt. The ancient Egyptians were admirers of cats who made it a crime to kill or export felines. Prior to "The Cats of Ulthar", Lovecraft had penned several tales in the style of Lord Dunsany, including "The White Ship", "The Street", "The Doom that Came to Sarnath", "The Terrible Old Man", and "The Tree". His next Dunsanian tale, "Celephaïs", was considered by Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi to be "one of his best and most significant". "The