The Black Cat

A short story by Edgar Allan Poe

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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 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.
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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.

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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
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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 itbecause 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 wore 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

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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, 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 stupified, 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
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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
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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 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 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,
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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 myheart!

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

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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 red of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily
displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up
as before, so that no eye could detect any thing 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 which could not
be distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went over the
new brickwork. 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

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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 freeman. 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.

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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 dammed 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 toiling 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!

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homely (adjective): plain
solicit (verb): to try to get; to request
unburthen (verb): to offer freedom or relief from something
succinctly (adverb): without too much detail
expound (verb): to explain
barroques (noun - French): fanciful adventure novels
desolate (adjective): deserted; very alone
phantasm (noun): illusion
docility (noun): strong ability to learn or take direction
conspicuous (adjective): very noticeable
indulged (adjective): treated with something that brings pleasure
sagacious (adjective): having good judgement
derivable (adjective): able to receive from a source
paltry (adjective): very small; almost non-existent
gossamer (adjective): delicate
fidelity (noun): faithfulness
Fiend Intemperance (noun): alcoholism
intemperance (noun): inability to refrain from drinking
blush (verb): to turn red in the face due to embarrassment
scruple (noun): doubt
peevish (adjective): irritable; cranky
malevolence (noun): hatred
atrocity (noun): a terrible occurrence
debauch (noun): the act of becoming drunk
equivocal (adjective): uncertain
irrevocable (adjective): unable to be changed
perverseness (noun): stubbornness
unfathomable (adjective): unthinkable
vex (verb): to annoy
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conflagration (noun): a major fire
graven (adjective): carved
bas relief (noun): a type of sculpture
apparition (noun): ghost
adjacent (adjective): next to something
carcass (noun): dead body of an animal
stupefied (adjective): shocked
evince (verb): to reveal
domesticate (verb): to become part of the home
odious (adjective): very unpleasant
pestilence (noun): an infectious disease that causes death
aversion (noun): dislike
partiality (adjective): fondness for someone or something specific
loathsome (adjective): causing disgust
aversion (noun): dislike
gallows (noun): execution by hanging
contemptuously (adverb): with a feeling of hatred
incumbent (adjective): resting on 
succumb (verb): to surrender to
goad (verb): provoke or annoy someone into some action
tranquilly (adverb): peacefully
felicity (noun): happiness
inscrutability (noun): mysteriousness
allay (verb): to diminish
anomalous (adjective): abnormal; non-standard; not expected

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