THE BLACK CAT by Edgar Allan Poe, 1843

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 to-morrow I die, and
to-day I would unburthen 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 --have tortured --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 baroques. 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
peculiar 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 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 fibre 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 every 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 marvellous. 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, had
then with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, 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 fall 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 it at 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 chimaeras 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 y si 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 any more! During the former the
creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of
unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight --an
incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off --incumbent eternally upon my heart!
Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me
succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates --the darkest and most evil of thoughts.
The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind;
while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now
blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most
patient of sufferers.
One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar of the old
building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep
stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and
forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a
blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I
wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference, into
a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her
brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.
This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the
task of concealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it from the house, either by day
or by night, without the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my
mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying
them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I
deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard --about packing it in a box, as if
merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the house.
Finally I hit upon what I considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined
to wall it up in the cellar --as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have walled up
their victims.
For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were loosely constructed, and
had lately been plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the
atmosphere had prevented from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection,
caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up, and made to resemble the rest
of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily displace the at this point, insert the corpse,
and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could detect anything suspicious.
And in this calculation I was not deceived. By means of a crow-bar I easily dislodged the
bricks, and, having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped it in that
position, while, with little trouble, I re-laid the whole structure as it originally stood. Having
procured mortar, sand, and hair, with every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster could not
every poss be distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went over the new
brick-work. When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present
the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up
with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself --"Here at least,
then, my labor has not been in vain."
My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness;
for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I been able to meet with it, at the
moment, there could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had
been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and forebore to present itself in my
present mood. It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief
which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its
appearance during the night --and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the
house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my
soul!
The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not. Once again I breathed
as a free-man. The monster, in terror, had fled the premises forever! I should behold it no
more! My happiness was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some
few inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had been
instituted --but of course nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as
secured.
Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came, very unexpectedly, into
the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure,
however, in the inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever.
The officers bade me accompany them in their search. They left no nook or corner
unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into the cellar. I quivered
not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked the
cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro. The
police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong
to be restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly
sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.
"Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I delight to have allayed your
suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this --this
is a very well constructed house." (In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely
knew what I uttered at all.) --"I may say an excellently well constructed house. These walls
--are you going, gentlemen? --these walls are solidly put together"; and here, through the
mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that
very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend! No sooner had the
reverberation of my blows sunk into silence than I was answered by a voice from within the
tomb! --by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly
swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman --a
howl --a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only
out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that
exult in the damnation.
Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one
instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe.
In the next, a dozen stout arms were tolling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already
greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its
head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had
seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had
walled the monster up within the tomb!

--THE END--