The King of the Cats (or The King o' the Cats) is a British folk tale. The earliest known example is found in a letter written by Thomas Lyttelton, 2nd Baron Lyttelton, first published in 1782, though Walter Scott reports that it was a well known nursery tale in the Scottish Highlands. M. G. Lewis related the story to Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816, and a version was adapted by Joseph Jacobs from several sources, including one collected by Charlotte S. Burne in Herefordshire. It can be categorised as a "death of an elf (or cat)" tale: Aarne–Thompson–Uther type 113A, or Christiansen migratory legend type 6070B.
Read more about The King O' The Cats: Summary, Variants, Folk Tradition, Influence, See Also
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“You all talk like somebody else made these laws and Pharaoh don’t know nothing about ‘em. He makes ‘em his own self and he’s glad when we come tell him they hurt. why, that’s a whole lot of pleasure to him, to be making up laws all the time and to have a crowd like us around handy to pass all his mean ones on. Why, that’s a whole everything under the sun! Next thing you know he’ll be saying cats can’t have kittens.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)