"Cats and Dogs" by H.P. Lovecraft (1918)

Well this was something of an unexpected topic. And given the topic, it is unexpectedly long! And boy oh boy is Lovecraft absolutely savage on this topic! Probably going to piss a lot of people off something mighty. Just bear in mind these are Lovecraft's opinions, not my own!

And for better or worse, we see a lot of Lovecraft's attitudes on race and on politics, none of them very appealing to the values of the the modern liberal democracy. Some of the specific words he uses make most of us today cringe super hard. Although bear in mind this essay was written early in his career (in 1918), and his views on both topics would change as he got older.

Kynophile is apparently not a word, by cynophile is. However, 'cyn' uses a soft 'c' sound, while 'kyn' would suggest a hard sound. Either Lovecraft never heard the word used, only seen it written down, and so had a wrong pronunciation in his head that lead to his misspelling of it in this way when he tried to use it, or else the 'kyn' version has fallen completely out of use. Or, maybe it's a legit word in another language - a google search does bring up some results in German, but it isn't obviously specific to dogs so much as animals in general. Whatever the case may be, because it is written with a 'k' and not a 'c', and there is no such thing as a 'soft k', you get a hard sound for the word, no matter how wrong that might be. Oh well. I blame Lovecraft.

"The Arrow Collar" I assume is a reference to the Arrow Collar Man, from the Cluett Peabody & Company marketing campaign from 1905-1931. It's the right time period, anyways.

Harold Bell Wright was a preacher and author from the first half of the 20th century, who was very popular in his day, but seems to have faded into obscurity since.

I was quite mystified at first what the motor car and Mrs. Sanger had to do with the Arrow Collar men and Harold Bell Wright, but that's not how the text is meant to be understood, rather the motor car reduced the need for horses, and Mrs. [Margaret] Sanger reduced the number of babies, the two other things we are supposed to love in addition to dogs.

Chryselephantine = overlaid with gold and ivory.

To follow along: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/cd.aspx