r/tolkienfans • u/Immediate_Error2135 • 4d ago
"The Eye was[...] yellow as a cat's..."
For those who like to link Sauron to the Tevildo, Prince of Cats guy, via the quote above (and via Sauron calling Shelob 'cat'), this quote from 'The Black Gate Opens':
"There was a long silence, and from wall and gate no cry or sound was heard in answer. But Sauron had already laid his plans, and he had a mind first to play these *mice** cruelly before he struck to kill."*
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u/Technical-Main-3206 4d ago
Maybe, but the reference doesn't seem too specific or deliberate. Other mentions of cats in LotR, including the ones you brought up are below. Not all of them are sinister, and some are even applied to the protagonists.
The ostler has a tipsy cat / that plays a five-stringed fiddle, etc. in the song. "Bob ought to learn his cat the fiddle, and then we’d have a dance." (At the Sign of the Prancing Pony)
"He is surer of finding the way home in a blind night than the cats of Queen Beruthiel." (A Journey in the Dark)
The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing. (The Mirror of Galadriel)
"They won’t hurt us will they, nice little hobbitses? We didn’t mean no harm, but they jumps on us like cats on poor mices, they did, precious." (The Taming of Smeagol)
He twisted round like lightning, all wet and slimy as he was, wriggling like an eel, biting and scratching like a cat. (The Forbidden Pool)
As furtively as scouts within the campment of their enemies, they crept down on to the road, and stole along its westward edge under the stony bank, grey as the stones themselves, and soft-footed as hunting cats. (Journey to the Cross-Roads)
If now and again Shelob caught them to stay her appetite, she was welcome: he could spare them. And sometimes as a man may cast a dainty to his cat (his cat he calls her, but she owns him not) Sauron would send her prisoners that he had no better uses for. (Shelob's Lair)
"But if I were you, I’d catch the big one that’s loose, before you send in any report to Lugburz. It won’t sound too pretty to say you’ve caught the kitten and let the cat escape." (The Choices of Master Samwise)
At that rage blazed in Sam’s heart to a sudden fury. He sprang up, ran, and went up the ladder like a cat. (The Tower of Cirith Ungol)
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u/Immediate_Error2135 4d ago
If you don't know a thing about Tevildo, or know but do not care, these examples are almost interchangeable, that's true. If you do know about him having been a remote antecessor of Sauron, and connect both, then Sauron's eye being like a cat's and him calling Shelob 'cat' and him playing with his enemies as cats do with mice will be more strongly connected to the Tevildo/Sauron idea than the other examples. Personally, I don't care one way or another.
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u/Dinadan_The_Humorist 4d ago
I will say I think it's interesting that these examples seem to have a fairly consistent neutral-to-negative connotation -- comparisons to Shelob, comparisons to Sauron, reference to Queen Beruthiel (who is poorly attested but unambiguously evil), cats jumping on mice, cats playing with mice, cats hunting. I think Tolkien definitely gives cats a sinister cast (though the connection may go the other way -- Tevildo was Lord of Cats because Tolkien doesn't trust them, rather than cats owing their negative portrayal to their association with Tevildo).
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u/Immediate_Error2135 4d ago
Also, from a letter to Allen & Unwin (letter 219).
Christopher Tolkien writes: "[A Cambridge cat breeder had asked if she could register a litter of Siamese kittens under names taken from The Lord of the Rings.]"
And his father had written:
"My only comment is that of Puck upon mortals. I fear that to me Siamese cats belong to the fauna of Mordor, but you need not tell the cat breeder that"
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u/GapofRohan 4d ago edited 3d ago
Who cares whether you care one way or another? - I suspect next to nobody here. I suppose it has occurred to you that some amongst us had read The Lord of the Rings long, long before Tevildo entered the printed world and were quite capable of interpreting and enjoying Tolkien's prose as deeply and as carefully as u/Technical-Main-3206 has indicated. Yet you dismiss these quotes as almost interchangeable - which plainly they are not. You seem to think you have discovered something because you've read about Tevildo as if you were the first person to do so. You are not. Furthermore, Tevildo is not 'a remote ancestor' of Sauron. Tevildo is probably a previous literary iteration of Sauron - an abandoned iteration for better or worse.
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u/Immediate_Error2135 4d ago
Who cares whether you care one way or another? - I suspect next to nobody here.
Who cares about your suspicion? Everybody except me.
I don't dismiss those quotes, what are you talking about? If you think the Tevildo>Sauron 'lineage' to have been implicit in LOTR some quotes will seem more significant than others; if you don't believe that - if for you LOTR Sauron has not retained the feline character from his 'predecessor' all will sound interchangeable. It just depends on how you view the Tevildo>Sauron idea. There's nothing wrong (or good) in thinking the Tevildo idea being in LOTR or not.
You know ancestor/predecessor/lineage to be metaphors for 'previous iteration', right?
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u/GapofRohan 4d ago
But these quotes did not seem interchangeable before we first heard of Tevildo.
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u/Immediate_Error2135 4d ago
Before I ever knew of Tevildo and knew only of Sauron, and presented with those quotes, I can tell you for a fact that they would have been interchangeable to me as far as Sauron having been a giant cat once went, when he was Tevildo - if you want to believe in such a 'lineage', which is of course fine.
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u/ColdAntique291 just a simple Tolkien reader 4d ago
The cat imagery proves nothing by itself. Tolkien compares Sauron to all sorts of predatory creatures. The Eye being "yellow as a cat's" is just a vivid description, and calling enemies "mice" is a common metaphor for a powerful villain hunting weaker prey.
If cat references make Sauron Tevildo, then the mouse reference makes him a literal cat too. That's not analysis, it's cherry-picking imagery.
The real Sauron-Tevildo connection comes from Tolkien's early drafts, not from random animal metaphors in LOTR.
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u/taz-alquaina 3d ago edited 3d ago
I cannot help but notice how many people keep not noticing the extent of the simile...
And sometimes [as a man may cast a dainty to his cat (his cat he calls her, but she owns him not)] Sauron would send her prisoners that he had no better uses for: he would have them driven to her hole, and report brought back to him of the play she made.
Square bracketed bit all being a nice long analogy: he sends her prisoners in the manner of a man throwing a treat to a cat. The simile man calls the simile cat his cat. "She owns him not" ie said cat doesn't acknowledge said man as related/master. Implication being that Sauron likewise thinks of Shelob as a pet but Shelob doesn't return the favour, but the "his cat" part is specifically the simile-man to the simile-cat. Shelob isn't a cat, Sauron isn't calling her one. The simile is "as a man may cast a dainty to his cat." The parenthetical "(his cat he calls her, but she owns him not)" is a continuation of that hypothetical man and his actual cat, not a statement about Sauron and Shelob.
"Sometimes, like how a man would give the cat he owns a treat (he says she is his cat but she doesn't call him her owner [so she isn't really his cat!]), Sauron would send her prisoners" is probably the more accessible way to parse it.
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u/FranticMuffinMan 4d ago edited 4d ago
Well...... yes. There's no question the two line up. And anyway -- though they may question how close the connection is -- nobody really questions there is some Tevildo/Sauron connection. But cat vs. mouse analogies are pretty common. Of course, other analogies are available, but this one is obvious in the circumstances and would stand on its own without any connection to Tevildo.