The Black Cat (Unabridged)

The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in the August 19, 1843, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. In the story, an unnamed narrator has a strong affection for pets until he perversely turns to abusing them. His favorite, a pet black cat, bites him one night and the narrator punishes it by cutting its eye out and then hanging it from a tree. The home burns down but one remaining wall shows a burned outline of a cat hanging from a noose. He soon finds another black cat, similar to the first except for a white mark on its chest, but he soon develops a hatred for it as well.

Plot:
The story is presented as a first-person narrative using an unnamed unreliable narrator. He is a condemned man at the outset of the story.[3] The narrator tells us that from an early age he has loved animals; he and his wife have many pets, including a large, beautiful black cat (as described by the narrator) named Pluto. This cat is especially fond of the narrator and vice versa. Their mutual friendship lasts for several years until the narrator becomes an alcoholic. One night, after coming home completely intoxicated, he believes the cat to be avoiding him. When he tries to seize it, the panicked cat bites the narrator, and in a fit of drunken rage he seizes the animal, pulls a pen-knife from his pocket, and deliberately gouges out the cat's eye.

From that moment on, the cat flees in terror at his master's approach. At first, the narrator is remorseful and regrets his cruelty. 'But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of perverseness.' In another fit of drunken fury, the narrator takes the cat out in the garden one morning and ties a noose around its neck, hanging it from a tree where it dies. That very night his house mysteriously catches fire, forcing the narrator, his wife and their servant to flee the premises.
The next day, the narrator returns to the ruins of his home to find, imprinted on the single wall that survived the fire, the apparition of a gigantic cat with a rope around the animal's neck.