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 them, 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. [Illustration: “_One night, returning home much intoxicated._”]

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, hundreds of times, found himself committing a vile or 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 cold 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 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 offense; 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 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 marvelous. 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

[Illustration: “_Because I knew that it had loved me._”]

startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep
impression upon my fancy.