THEBLACK CATBYEDGAR ALLAN POE77^^WWYYSS``ff77TTaaaa]]ee COPYRIGHT INFORMATIONShort Story: “The Black Cat”Author: Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–49First published: 1843The original short story is in the public domain in theUnited States and in most, if not all, other countries as well.Readers outside the United States should check their owncountries’ copyright laws to be certain they can legallydownload this e-story. The Online Books Page has an FAQwhich gives a summary of copyright durations for manyother countries, as well as links to more official sources.This PDF ebook wascreated by José Menéndez. 3FOR the most wild yet most homely narrative which I amabout to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeedwould I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses rejecttheir own evidence. Yet, mad am I not—and very surely do Inot dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I wouldunburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place beforethe world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a seriesof mere household events. In their consequences, theseevents have terrified—have tortured—have destroyed me.Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they havepresented little but horror—to many they will seem lessterrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellectmay be found which will reduce my phantasm to thecommonplace—some intellect more calm, more logical, andfar less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in thecircumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than anordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.From my infancy I was noted for the docility andhumanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart waseven so conspicuous as to make me the jest of mycompanions. I was especially fond of animals, and wasindulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. Withthese I spent most of my time, and never was so happy aswhen feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity ofcharacter grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, Iderived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. Tothose who have cherished an affection for a faithful andsagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explainingthe nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable.There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love THE BLACK CAT4of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who hashad frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship andgossamer fidelity of mere Man.I married early, and was happy to find in my wife adisposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing mypartiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity ofprocuring 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. Inspeaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not alittle tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion tothe ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats aswitches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon thispoint—and I mention the matter at all for no better reasonthan that it happens, just now, to be remembered.Pluto—this was the cat’s name—was my favorite petand playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me whereverI went about the house. It was even with difficulty that Icould 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 theworse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, moreregardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to useintemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offeredher personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feelthe change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficientregard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made noscruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even thedog, when, by accident, or through affection, they came in EDGAR ALLAN POE 5my way. But my disease grew upon me—for what disease islike Alcohol!—and at length even Pluto, who was nowbecoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish—evenPluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from oneof my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided mypresence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, heinflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. Thefury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself nolonger. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flightfrom my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from mywaistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poorbeast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes fromthe socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen thedamnable atrocity.When reason returned with the morning—when I hadslept off the fumes of the night’s debauch—I experienced asentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime ofwhich I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble andequivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I againplunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memoryof the deed.In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket ofthe lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, buthe no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about thehouse as usual, but, as might be expected, fled in extremeterror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left, asto be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of acreature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soongave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final andirrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of thisspirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure THE BLACK CAT6that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of theprimitive impulses of the human heart—one of theindivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which givedirection to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundredtimes, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, forno other reason than because he knows he should not? Havewe not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our bestjudgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because weunderstand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say,came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomablelonging of the soul to vex itself—to offer violence to its ownnature—to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only—that urgedme to continue and finally to consummate the injury I hadinflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in coldblood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to thelimb of a tree;—hung it with the tears streaming from myeyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart;—hung itbecause I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it hadgiven me no reason of offence;—hung it because I knew thatin so doing I was committing a sin—a deadly sin that wouldso jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it—if such athing were possible—even beyond the reach of the infinitemercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.On the night of the day on which this most cruel deedwas done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. Thecurtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house wasblazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant,and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. Thedestruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth wasswallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward todespair.I am above the weakness of seeking to establish asequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the EDGAR ALLAN POE 7atrocity. But I am detailing a chain of facts—and wish not toleave even a possible link imperfect. On the day succeedingthe fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with one exception,had fallen in. This exception was found in a compartmentwall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of thehouse, and against which had rested the head of my bed. Theplastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action ofthe fire—a fact which I attributed to its having been recentlyspread. About this wall a dense crowd were collected, andmany persons seemed to be examining a particular portion ofit with very minute and eager attention. The words“strange!” “singular!” and other similar expressions, excitedmy curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bas-reliefupon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. Theimpression 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 scarcelyregard it as less—my wonder and my terror were extreme.But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat, Iremembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent to thehouse. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had beenimmediately filled by the crowd—by some one of whom theanimal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, throughan open window, into my chamber. This had probably beendone with the view of arousing me from sleep. The falling ofother walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into thesubstance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which,with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, had thenaccomplished the portraiture as I saw it.Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if notaltogether to my conscience, for the startling fact justdetailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep impressionupon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself of the THE BLACK CAT8phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came backinto my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not,remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, andto look about me, among the vile haunts which I nowhabitually frequented, for another pet of the same species,and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supplyits place.One night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den of more thaninfamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to some blackobject, reposing upon the head of one of the immensehogsheads of gin, or of rum, which constituted the chieffurniture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at thetop of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now causedme surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived theobject thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with myhand. It was a black cat—a very large one—fully as large asPluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one.Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body; butthis cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white,covering nearly the whole region of the breast.Upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purredloudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted withmy notice. This, then, was the very creature of which I wasin search. I at once offered to purchase it of the landlord; butthis person made no claim to it—knew nothing of it—hadnever seen it before.I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to gohome, the animal evinced a disposition to accompany me. Ipermitted it to do so; occasionally stooping and patting it as Iproceeded. When it reached the house it domesticated itselfat once, and became immediately a great favorite with mywife. EDGAR ALLAN POE 9For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arisingwithin me. This was just the reverse of what I hadanticipated; but—I know not how or why it was—its evidentfondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed me. Byslow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance roseinto the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certainsense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed ofcruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not,for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; butgradually—very gradually—I came to look upon it withunutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odiouspresence, as from the breath of a pestilence.What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, wasthe discovery, on the morning after I brought it home, that,like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. Thiscircumstance, however, only endeared it to my wife, who, asI have already said, possessed, in a high degree, thathumanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishingtrait, and the source of many of my simplest and purestpleasures.With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality formyself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with apertinacity which it would be difficult to make the readercomprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath mychair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with itsloathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get betweenmy feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening itslong and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, tomy breast. At such times, although I longed to destroy it witha blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by amemory of my former crime, but chiefly—let me confess itat once—by absolute dread of the beast. THE BLACK CAT10This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil—and yet I should be at a loss how otherwise to define it. I amalmost ashamed to own—yes, even in this felon’s cell, I amalmost ashamed to own—that the terror and horror withwhich the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one ofthe merest chimeras it would be possible to conceive. Mywife had called my attention, more than once, to thecharacter of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken,and which constituted the sole visible difference between thestrange beast and the one I had destroyed. The reader willremember that this mark, although large, had been originallyvery indefinite; but, by slow degrees—degrees nearlyimperceptible, and which for a long time my reasonstruggled to reject as fanciful—it had, at length, assumed arigorous distinctness of outline. It was now therepresentation of an object that I shudder to name—and forthis, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have ridmyself of the monster had I dared—it was now, I say, theimage of a hideous—of a ghastly thing—of the GALLOWS!—oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime—ofAgony and of Death !And now was I indeed wretched beyond thewretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast—whosefellow I had contemptuously destroyed—a brute beast towork out for me—for me, a man fashioned in the image ofthe High God—so much of insufferable woe! Alas! neitherby day nor by night knew I the blessing of rest any more!During the former the creature left me no moment alone, andin the latter I started hourly from dreams of unutterable fearto find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vastweight—an incarnate nightmare that I had no power to shakeoff—incumbent eternally upon my heart! EDGAR ALLAN POE 11Beneath the pressure of torments such as these thefeeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evilthoughts became my sole intimates—the darkest and mostevil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temperincreased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; whilefrom the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of afury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, myuncomplaining wife, alas, was the most usual and the mostpatient of sufferers.One day she accompanied me, upon some householderrand, into the cellar of the old building which our povertycompelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steepstairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me tomadness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, thechildish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed ablow at the animal, which, of course, would have provedinstantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blowwas arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded by theinterference into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrewmy arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. Shefell dead upon the spot without a groan.This hideous murder accomplished, I set myselfforthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task ofconcealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it fromthe house, either by day or by night, without the risk of beingobserved by the neighbors. Many projects entered my mind.At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minutefragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, Iresolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again,I deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard—aboutpacking it in a box, as if merchandise, with the usualarrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from thehouse. Finally I hit upon what I considered a far better