For months I could not rid myself of the
phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my
spirit a half sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far
as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the
vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the
same species and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply
its place. One night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den of more than infamy, my
attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the
head of one of the immense hogsheads of gin, or of rum, which
constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking
steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now
caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the
object thereupon. I approached it and touched it with my hand. It was a
black cat--a very large one--fully as large as Pluto, and closely
resembling him in every respect, but only Pluto had not a white hair
upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although
indefinite, splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the
breast. Upon my touching him he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed against
my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then, was the
very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase it
of the landlord; but this person made no claim to it--knew nothing of
it--had never seen it before. I continued my caresses, and when I prepared to go home the animal
evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so,
occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the
house it domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great
favorite with my wife. For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This
was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but--I know not how or
why it was--its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed
me. By slow degrees these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into
the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of
shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me
from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or
otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually--very gradually--I came to
look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its
odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence. What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on
the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been
deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared
it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree,
that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait,
and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures. With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed
to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would
be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat it would
crouch beneath my chair or spring upon my knees, covering me with its
loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet, and
thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my
dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although I
longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing,
partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly--let me confess it at
once--by absolute dread of the beast. This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil--and yet I should be
at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to own--yes,
even in this felon’s cell, I am almost ashamed to own--that the terror
and horror with which the animal inspired me had been heightened by one
of the merest chimeras it would be possible to conceive. My wife had
called my attention more than once, to the character of the mark of
white hair, of which I have spoken, and which

[Illustration: “_The figure of a gigantic cat._”]

constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and
the one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this mark,
although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by slow
degrees--degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long time my
reason struggled to reject as fanciful--it had, at length, assumed a
rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the representation of an
object that I shudder to name--and for this, above all, I loathed and
dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared--it was
now I say the image of a hideous, of a ghastly thing--of the gallows! Oh, mournful and terrible engine of horror and of crime--of agony and of
death! And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere humanity. And a brute beast, whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed--a brute
beast to work out for me--for me, a man, fashioned in the image of the
High God--so much of insufferable woe. Alas! neither by day nor 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 nightmare that I had no power to shake
off--incumbent eternally upon my heart. Beneath the pressure of torments such as these the feeble remnants of
the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole
intimates--the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my
usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind;
while, from the sudden, frequent and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to
which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was
the most usual and the most patient of sufferers. One day she accompanied me upon some household errand into the cellar of
the old building, which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat
followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong,
exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my
wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a
blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal
had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of
my wife. Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal,
I withdrew my arm from her grasp, and buried the ax in her brain. She
fell dead upon the spot, without a groan. This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with
entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I
could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without
the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my
mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute
fragments and destroying them by fire. At another I resolved to dig a
grave for it in the floor of the cellar.