The Black Cat

Summary: An animal lover, whom I shall call Bill for simplicity reasons (he was never given a name), as a black cat named Pluto who he adores. Unfortunately, Bill gets addicted to alcohol, and his beloved Pluto avoids him. One night, Bill gets angry at Pluto and picks him up to pet him, but Pluto bites Bill on the hand. Bill is enraged, he is intoxicated this whole time by the way, and he grabs his pen knife from his jacket AND CARVES PLUTO'S EYE OUT. The next day, Bill is remorseful. After a few days, Bill is so wrought with regret, he decides to put Pluto out of his misery by hanging him. That night, Bill's house burns down, but he, his wife, and a servant or two are able to escape. Bill returns to the ruins of his home, with only one wall standing, with a portrait of the deceased Pluto.

Bill moves into a temporary new house, which I believed to be a cellar, and he starts to miss his beloved Pluto. Bill is still addicted to alcohol, so one night, while at a tavern, he spots a cat very similar to Pluto and takes the cat with him. The only difference between Pluto and this new cat, is that Pluto was a rich, solid black, but the new cat has a big white spot on its chest. He soon realizes that the cat's white spot is in the shape of the gallows. Bill's affection for his new cat soon turns to hatred, and he despises the thing. One day, Bill and his wife are down in the cellar, and the cat trips Bill and nearly kills him. In a rage, Bill gets an axe and attempts to kill the cat, but his wife stops him before he is able to. So instead of killing the cat, Bill swings the axe into his wife's head. The cat has run away, so Bill has the task of hiding is wife's corpse. He pulls apart one of the walls in the cellar and stuffs her dead body in the hole. After a few days, the police come unexpectedly to search the house, and everything looks fine, so they do not charge Bill of any crimes. As the police are leaving Bill says goodbye, and goes to knock on the wall where the corpse is, and an unearthly howl starts and Bill backs off, in terror, to the opposite wall. The police are instantly aware that their search is not finished so they take apart the wall, and there is Bill's wife's corpse and the cat perched on her head howling with it's one eye and mouth wide open. Bill is sentenced to hang on the gallows.

Characterization: Bill was sane in the start of the story, but his alcohol addiction led to him becoming irrational towards his various pets, and Pluto was no exception. The morning after Bill had carved Pluto's eye out, I saw that he was more sane and rational in is thinking. When the new cat is introduced, Bill takes an immediate liking to it. For some unknown reason, the cat instills a hate in Bill that he cannot be in the same room with the cat. I never fully understood why Bill had hated the cat so much, but I suspect that it has to do with it's similarity to Pluto. Also, Bill's irrational hatred for the new cat led him to kill his wife by putting an axe in her head, when all she did was stop him from killing the cat. In the end, I think that Bill had snapped and that he got what was coming to him