The Main Villain of 'The Lord of the Rings' Was Not Supposed to be Sauron, but... a Cat: Here's an Abandoned Idea
The original image of the saga's main antagonist raises questions.
John Tolkien was a master of world-building, painstakingly building Middle-earth and its history over decades. The result was The Lord of the Rings, a work with some of the deepest, richest mythologies and lore in all of fantasy. The details of his world are exquisite and astonishing, but given the sheer volume of them, there are inevitably some that are strange, even funny.
These are mostly details that didn’t make it into the books, and therefore into Peter Jackson’s films. Most of these details come from Tolkien’s drafts. And they shed light on the character of Sauron.
Sauron was supposed to be a Cat
It’s hard to imagine the main antagonist of The Lord of the Rings as a cat rather than Sauron, but Tolkien’s early drafts show that this was his original plan. The Book of Lost Tales: Part Two, a collection of his drafts, contains a version of the story of Beren and Luthien from The Silmarillion. The main villain there is not Sauron, but Tevildo, the Prince of Cats.
Tevildo was an evil spirit who either possessed a cat or took its form. In the final version of the legend, Beren's opponent is Sauron, not Tevildo, but it is this treacherous cat who is considered the prototype of the Dark Lord.
Sauron was the Lord of Werewolves
If Sauron's predecessor was a cat, then the Dark Lord himself apparently ended up preferring dogs. Although he is known as a powerful lord in the films, The Silmarillion reveals that in the First Age he was called the Lord of Werewolves. As a servant of Morgoth, he gained great power and attracted many wolfhounds to follow him. In one battle, Sauron even took the form of a werewolf himself.
In Middle-earth, werewolves are not human-wolf hybrids, but creatures that resemble wolves or wargs in appearance, but possess human intelligence.
