Cats & Dragons

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Dragons have catlike characteristics! I'm all for it!

Hissss!! Roaarrrr!!

I submit that Tolkien's dragons are especially like cats; much more so than the usual dragons of myth and folkore. I surmise that this illustrates not only Tolkien's dislike of cats but also a grudging respect for them and even a hidden affection.

The obvious comparison is Smaug, who stretches out on his treasure like a cat and purrs when Bilbo flatters him. The riddling conversation reveals a cat who likes to play with his prey before eating him.

Smaug is un-cat-like in that he is bold and fearless. He is like an armoured cat that lives on an island with no dogs and no rival cats.

The true dragon-cat of Tolkien's stories is of course my namesake, Chrysophylax Dives, a dragon who is not over-bold. Unfortunately, as few on the plaza have read Farmer Giles of Ham there is little point exploring this comparison further.

[VelvetineZone]

Have you seen the How to Train Your Dragon films? The dragon is very catlike at times.

I haven't read Father Giles. Still on the Silmarillion.

[Saranna]

Yes, @VelvetineZone I saw the first one and there is that hint of dragons being feline in their movements as well as reptilian. Chrysophylax Dives (the original one) is a remarkable dragon and I do love that story. It's very funny.

[VelvetineZone]

I want to put a like emoji on your reply, @Saranna like I do on Facebook posts! I'll reply instead to show that I read and liked your answer. They are fab films.

[Saranna]

We used to have the thumbs up sign for 'Like' on the Old Plaza - it's a useful symbol.

[Arothir]

While I think there is some agreement in that cats and dragons are seldom on the side of good (see the old drafts of Tevildo and Beruthiel's cats), I am afraid to fully say that they are too similar, and I believe that the similarities between them are more convergent than anything, where fantasy dragons just seem to be kind of feline in nature on their own (though I will state that my description of the Rankin-Bass Smaug is cat-dragon Smaug).

[Silky Gooseness]

Smaug is quite catlike, I will accept. But Glaurung’s description really very lizardy. I seem to remember him being sort of slimy?! which is about as far from cat fur as you can get. His particular catlike aspect is, probably, sitting precisely on the one thing you don’t want him to be sitting on, and staring directly at you to show enmity.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I feel some unwarranted sentimentality in your image of the cat and wonder if you fail to see the worm in the cat? A dragon is not a lizard but a serpent. A serpent and a cat are paired as enemies, and so in some ways alike.* One way cat and serpent are alike, suggests Tolkien, is their eyes.

Tevildo, so vividly described in Books of Lost Tales, transforms into Thû the Necromancer who looks out of his Elvish watchtower on Tol Sirion with 'eyes of flame' and is Sauron, seducer of Númenóreans, where he was the Devil as Serpent. As the Eye in the Dark Tower he resumes his look as a cat.

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', The Fellowship of the Ring

* This is a human pairing born of domesticity, such that cats were allowed into human houses because they caught not only mice but also snakes. Humans are the reason for our human perception of a cat-serpent opposition.