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The Black Cat By Edgar Allan Poe

For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect

nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses

reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream. But tomorrow

I die, and today I would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world,

plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events.

In their consequences, these events have terrified —havetortured—have destroyed me.

Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror—to many

they will seem less terrible than barroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found

which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place —some intellect more calm, more logical,

and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe,

nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.

From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness

of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions.

I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets.

With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them.

This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, I derived from it

one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection

for a faithful and sagacious dog,

I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification

thus derivable. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute,

which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry

friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man. I married early, and was happy to find in

my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets,

she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds,

gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.

This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an

astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured

with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded

all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point

—and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now,

to be remembered. Pluto—this was the cat's name—was my

favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house.

It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.

Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years,

during which my general temperament and character—through the instrumentality

of the Fiend Intemperance—had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration

for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings

of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered

her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition.

I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient

regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits,

the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way.

But my disease grew upon me—for what disease is like Alcohol! —and at length even Pluto,

who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish—even Pluto began to experience

the effects of my ill temper. One night, returning home, much intoxicated,

from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him;

when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth.

The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul

seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence,

gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife,

opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from

the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.

When reason returned with the morning—when I had slept off the fumes of the night's debauch

—I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of

which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul

remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.

In the meantime the cat slowly recovered.

The socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer

appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be expected,

fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left, as to be at

first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me.

But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable

overthrow, the spirit of perverseness. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account.

Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive

impulses of the human heart—one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give

direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing

a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not?

Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which

is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say,

came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself

—to offer violence to its own nature—to do wrong for the wrong's sake only—that urged me to

continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute.

One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;

—hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse

at my heart;—hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had

given me no reason of offence;—hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin

—a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it—if such

a thing were possible—even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful

and Most Terrible God. On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done,

I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames.

The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife,

a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was complete.

My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect,

between the disaster and the atrocity.

But I am detailing a chain of facts—and wish not to leave even

a possible link imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls,

with one exception, had fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall,

not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house,

and against which had rested the head of my bed.

The plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the fire

—a fact which I attributed to its having been recently spread. About this wall a dense crowd

were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it

with very minute and eager attention. The words “strange!” “singular!” and other similar

expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief upon the

white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy

truly marvelous. There was a rope about the animal's neck.

When I first beheld this apparition—for I could scarcely regard it as less—my wonder

and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered,

had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden

had been immediately filled by the crowd—by some one of whom the animal must have been

cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber.

This had probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep.

The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty

into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster;

the lime of which, with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass,

had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it. Although I thus readily accounted to my reason,

if not altogether to my conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the

less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself

of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my spirit a half-sentiment

that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal,

and to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another

pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place.

One night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly

drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head of one of the immense hogsheads of

Gin, or of Rum, which constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking

steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was

the fact that I had not sooner perceived the object thereupon. I approached it, and touched

it with my hand. It was a black cat—a very large one—fully as large as Pluto, and closely

resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body;

but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole

region of the breast. Upon my touching him, he immediately arose,

purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then,

was the very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase it of the landlord;

but this person made no claim to it—knew nothing of it—had never seen it before.

I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the animal evinced a disposition

to accompany me. I permitted it to do so; occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded.

When it reached the house it domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great

favorite with my wife. For my own part, I soon found a dislike to

it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but—I know not

how or why it was—its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow

degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided

the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty,

preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise

violently ill use it; but gradually—very gradually—I came to look upon it with unutterable

loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence.

What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after

I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes.

This circumstance, however, only endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed,

in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait,

and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.

With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase.

It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader

comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees,

covering me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet

and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber,

in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although I longed to destroy it with a blow,

I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly

—let me confess it at once—by absolute dread of the beast.

This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil—and yet I should be at a loss how otherwise

to define it. I am almost ashamed to own—yes, even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed

to own—that the terror and horror with which the animal inspired me, had been heightened

by one of the merest chimæras it would be possible to conceive. My wife had called my

attention, more than once, to the character of the mark of white hair, of which I have

spoken, and which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and the

one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this mark, although large, had been originally

very indefinite; but, by slow degrees—degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long

time my Reason struggled to reject as fanciful—it had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinctness

of outline. It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to name—and for this,

above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster

had I dared—it was now, I say, the image of a hideous—of a ghastly thing—of the GALLOWS!

—oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime—of Agony and of Death!

And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast

—whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed—a brute beast to work out for me—for me a man,

fashioned in the image of the High God—so much of insufferable wo! Alas!

Neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest anymore!

During the former the creature left me no moment alone;

and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear,