THE BLACK CAT
by Edgar Allan Poe, 1843
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--
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