The Black Cat

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 today 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 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 commonplace—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 favourite 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.
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 fiber 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 gave 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 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 forward 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 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-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 favourite 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 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 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
chimeras 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!—O, 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 woe! 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 nightmare 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 ax, 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 ax 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 neighbours. 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 merchandise, 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 bricks 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 crowbar 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 relaid 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 brick-work. When I had finished I felt satisfied that all was
all 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
last, then, my labour 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 forbore 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
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 by, 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 frenzy 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 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.