The Black Cat Response

     The short story "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allen Poe is about an alcoholic man who falls deeper and deeper into a mental illness. He ends up killing his wife in the end, after she tries to stop him from trying to kill their cat. This terrible action provides some insight into his condition.

     There are many points throughout the story at which it seems that the cat he adopts is the cause for all of his troubles. After he killed his first cat, Pluto, he "felt something that seemed like remorse, but was not" (para 36). When he went out to drink he found himself searching each night for a cat to replace Pluto. He found what he was looking for at a bar one day - a large, black cat that looked just like Pluto, save for a tuft of white fur. He enjoys its company at first, and lets it follow him home. Soon though, he begins to dislike it. He progresses farther and farther into a deep hatred. "Slowly, these feelings of disgust and annoyance grew into bitter hatred. I avoided the creature" (para 43). This hatred soon turns into a loathing he cannot put into words. Although the cat did nothing to purposefully disturb his owner, its affection makes him long "to kill it with a single blow" (para 48). 

     At the end of the story, he attempts to kill it when he and his wife go down to the cellar and the cat follows them. But his wife gets in the way. "Her interference drove me into an evil rage. I jerked my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain" (para 59). This shows how the narrator's mental illness isn't caused by the cat. It is caused by his alcoholism and perhaps his own genetic makeup, his anger is simply focused on the cat for some unknown reason. When he got into one of his episodes of rage and his wife tried to calm him down, he didn't relax, he didn't try to lunge at the cat again, he was filled with anger and it didn't matter who he took it out on. He chose to take it out on his own wife, and he didn't feel any remorse afterwards for doing so. He was too far gone to feel these emotions and he felt only happiness, for during the violence, the cat ran away. "It is impossible to describe or imagine how happy and relieved I felt when the hateful creature was absent" (para 69). 

     The twist of events that ends in his wife dying is truly horrifying, but it also forces the reader to think about what caused his disturbing condition. While the jailed, death row-headed narrator describes a deep and indescribable hatred towards the cat, his illness comes from other places, and not from just the cat itself.