Grimalkin
Grimalkin is a gigantic stone statue brought to a condition of semi-life by Blaise Reynard in Vyones, in the year 1138. Grimalkin was the embodiment of Reynard's wrath.
History
Characteristics
Real World Background
In Clark Ashton Smith's short story "The Maker of Gargolyes", The first stone gargoyle carved for the cathedral of Vyones by embittered stonemason Blasie Reynard is a "snarling, murderous, cat-headed monster, with retracted lips revealing formidable fangs, and eyes that glared intolerable hatred from beneath ferine brows". As in the Gargoyles comic, the cat-headed gargoyle is supernaturally animated by Reynard's hatred for the people of Vyones, going on a grisly weeks-long killing spree throughout the medieval French town. The story ends with a repentant repentant Reynard attempting to shatter his creations with a heavy sledgehammer. Reynard succeeds only in breaking off the cat-headed gargoyles stone forepaw before falling to his death when attacked by the dismembered limb. Unlike the Gargoyles version of the story, the cat-headed golem survives the events of "Maker" otherwise unscathed, continuing to brood hatefully over the town of Vyones.
A "cat-headed griffin" makes a brief appearance among the gargoyles of Vyones cathedral in Smith's "The Colossus of Ylourgne", set over a hundred and forty years after the events of "Maker", presumably intended to be one and the same as the late Reynard's creation.
