The Black Cats (17 page)

Dear Friend:

Soon
after our adventure, the newspaper printed the black cat’s
eulogy
. I surmised as much from the stack of copies Eddy brought
home and from the fuss he made over one particular page. Nothing escapes this
cat of letters. Speaking of me, and I am
always
speaking of me, I considered the papers splendid napping material.

In the
meantime, we do hope you purchase one of Eddy’s works. Winter is coming, and we
are in need of mutton.

And
chicken feathers.

Yours
truly,

Cattarina
Poe

“The Black Cat”

by Edgar Allan Poe

Originally published in the
United States Saturday Post
, August 19, 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 tomorrow 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.

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 illused 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 penknife, 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 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 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.