Shelob, the cat of Sauron

[arianrod]

didn't shelob Not work for sauron?

My thoughts exactly, One Axe. Shelob didn't work for or answer to anyone. She never killed trespassers to aid Sauron, she killed them to give herself a meal and she'd kill them regardless of whether Sauron was right next door in Mordor or not. I don't think Shelob much cared about the world outside her cave, and therefore wasn't too active and what you could call Middle Earth politics. I think Sauron was aware of her and used her blood thirsty nature to aide him, maybe even without the knowledge of Shelob herself. All she knew was that some poor fool would occasionally wander into her nets, and that's all she needed to know. How or why he was there was irrelevant.

My question revolves more around how content Sauron would be knowing that there was a power lurking in the caves around his land that he couldn't/didn't control.

A good point, Peredhil. I think that by knowing of her presence and using her appitite to his will possibly (as I've proposed before) without her direct knowledge, Sauron did feel that he had power over her. She was his disposal system for his prisoners and his sort of watchdog and he did rely on her in some sense, but in another he knew that all he had to do to stop her main food supply would be to cut off her Orc and Prisoner victims. I think this gave him a kind of power over her.

...did that make any sense at all? Sorry; I seem to be using alot of board space to let out my confusing ramblings...