Upon hearing of the couple's violent acts towards cats, Menes invokes a prayer before leaving town that causes the local felines to swarm the cat-killers' house and devour them.

Considered one of the best short stories of Lovecraft's early period, aspects of "The Cats of Ulthar" would be referenced again in the author's works The Other Gods and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.

[1] Menes spends time meditating prior to unleashing a prayer that affects the shapes and movements of the clouds in the sky, granting all the cats of Ulthar sentience.

[1] Lovecraft 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.

[2][3] 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.

[6] 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.

[4] "The Cats of Ulthar" was first published in the literary journal Tryout in November 1920,[1] and later appeared in Weird Tales in February 1926 and 1933, as well as being privately reprinted in a forty two-copy run in December 1935.

In this short story, written in August 1921 and first published in November 1933, Atal, now an adult, becomes an apprentice to Barzai the Wise and travels with him to seek out the tale's eponymous deities.

Atal also appears as a priest in the long The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath — written in 1927 but not published until 1943 — when protagonist Randolph Carter visits the city 300 years after the events in "The Cats of Ulthar", when the town is still heavily populated by felines.