Name: The Black Cat Edgar Allan Poe Audiobook subtitles Classic illustrated
Uploaded: 2023-10-12T03:21:13.000Z
Duration: 31 min 48 s
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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 to-morrow I die, and to-day 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 have presented little but horror—to  

many they will seem less terrible than barroques.  Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found  

which will reduce my phantasm to the  common-place—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,  

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 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 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 wore 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 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  