“For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.”
Humans are bastards. This is a well-known fact. Not everyone, obviously. I do still love the Writer more than any other human in the world. But the average person, especially one facing a crippling addiction, can be cruel.
The Black Cat is one of the most famous short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, first appearing in 1843. Like many horror stories, it begins with the eponymous narrator revealing his story to an ambiguous audience after the unsettling events have occurred.
In this case, the narrator is days away from hanging for the brutal murder of his wife. But it’s okay, he didn’t mean to kill the woman – he was aiming for the cat.
Seriously.
Why do horror stories always have to take out the violence on us? Are we not good enough? Do we not offer tempered disdain and the occasional nose boop?
But I’m beside myself. To the plot!
The Plot
The story is simple. The narrator was married and possessed a beloved black cat named Pluto, whom he loved dearly. Unfortunately, he started drinking and became consumed by the alcohol.
As one often does, the narrator became irritable and violent, attacking his wife and cat. One night, while drunk, he thinks Pluto is avoiding him. Pluto runs when the narrator tries to grab him. Enraged, the narrator picks Pluto up and stabs out his eye with a pen knife.
Bastard.
Although at first filled with remorse, the narrator soon despises Pluto for avoiding him. One day, he catches the cat and hangs it from a tree, killing it. That night, the house catches fire and the narrator, his wife, and all of his servants must flee.
Things go downhill from here. The narrator returns to his burned home only to find an imprint of a cat hanging from a noose left in the ashes. He runs away once more and lives in his new home, his guilt growing. One day, at the bar, he finds a cat that looks just like Pluto, even missing an eye. The only difference is the white patch on its chest.
Since this is a Poe story, you can watch as the man descends into madness, overwhelmed by his own guilt. Over time, he becomes convinced the cat is haunting him and begins to see the white patch on the new cat’s chest as a set of gallows. Eventually, he tries to kill the cat with an ax, only to be stopped by his wife, whom he murders in a fit of rage.
He walls up his wife in the basement and accidentally also traps the cat inside. The feline’s yowling leads to his crime being discovered, and the man being tried for murder.
The Review
This story is classic Poe, and is another which once again features a cat as the manifestation of a human’s guilt. It is shocking, lurid, and gory. Although it tries to be psychological, it’s hard to feel any compassion for the narrator. He beats his wife, tortures his cat, and eventually murders in cold blood.
It’s hard to admit, but I don’t consider this a good story. All it does is show humans can be bastards and addiction is a beast. While there was space to explore some interesting themes, it was left unexplored.
Though, to be fair, part of my dislike of the story could be that it’s written in the traditional style of the early 19th century, which is very dry and purple for modern audiences. Plus, I’m a cat. I don’t want to read about some poor cat being stabbed and strung up to die in the garden.
But I suppose that’s what makes it horrific.
I’m going to give The Black Cat 3/5 Paws. It’s scary for me because I don’t want to think about my human getting drunk and hurting me, but humans might find it more gratuitously violent than anything else. And this is after the Hitman cat story!
Also, if you want to read it, you can find it here!
Feline Fright Fest 