The Black Cat

The Black Cat is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe first published in 1843 in the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post.

The story tells, in first person, the narrator's descent into madness and self-destruction.

He lives with his wife and they have several animals, including a black cat named Pluto. The narrator has always been an animal lover and has a very good relationship with the cat. Pluto follows him around the house, the narrator is the only one who feeds him, and the bond between them is very strong.

However, the narrator becomes an alcoholic and the friendship between them is broken one night when he, totally drunk, becomes obsessed with the cat avoiding him. He tries to catch it, the frightened animal bites his hand, and in a fit of rage he cuts out one of its eyes with a penknife...

Subsequently he feels guilty and ashamed of his act, and the fact of seeing the poor animal without the eye reminds him all the time of the atrocious deed he has committed, which leads him more and more to madness and to commit worse acts...

"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".