Edgar Allen Poe's Writing and Story: The Black Cat
The Black Cat
By: Edgar Allen 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 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!
First published in the United States Saturday
Post, August, 1843.
Does your kitty just play with it's food?
If so, then perhaps you should consider providing your
Precious feline companion with a Dining Experience they
will enjoy eating
Your Kitty Deserves the Ultimate in Feline Cuisine
Check out Alfred's
Favorite Feline Cuisine Here
Alfred
See Also:
Back to All Cat Care & Kitty Fun Stuff
Search Our Site for Really Cool Stuff about Cats and Pets:
