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Poe Friday: The Black Cat

First off, I hope you are all having a great Friday. Hubby took me and the kids out to dinner today at IHOP (what is better than a stack of buttermilk pancakes and scrambled eggs for dinner?) and now i'm home getting some online time in.

This week I read Edgar Allan Poe's short story called The Black Cat.



first line: For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.

The narrator starts of the story by speaking about his black cat named Pluto. One day, he comes home drunk and Pluto scratches him. He loses control and cuts one of the cats eyes out.

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.

Soon after, the narrator hangs the cat. I know, how depressing. After a fire burns down his home, he and his wife end up living in a cellar. He then ends up finding another black cat. This cat however, has white fur on his chest. The narrators wife takes the cat in and the narrator soon begins to get creeped out by the animal. Before you know it, the narrator finds an ax and tries to kill the cat, when his wife stops him, he kills her instead.




I liked this short story. I always enjoy Poe's dramatic words.

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 !

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?

You can read Poe online for free here.