The Black Cat

In the short story "The Black Cat" by Edgar Poe Allan, Poe interestingly catches my attention by developing the plot and character quickly yet cunningly twisted. A short summary in my point of view about the story would be a man whose habit and his way of thinking destroys himself, his wife and his pets and finally ends up on a death row. After reading further, there were many questions that were raised in my mind. The most prevalent of all the question was how much can be rationally explained? And are superstition real?
As for the story it starts out to be a flashback by narrator who is never identified, for what I consider, Poe wanted to make him seem similar to every other human being. The narrator had a peculiar character. He was very
fond of pets. He considered himself as highly docile and humane which is why he had so many variety of pets. The pets in his house included "birds, goldfish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat"(1155).Pluto the cat of all pets was the narrator's favorite.
After reading the title itself the first thing that came into my mind was a black cat superstition. Cats have always held variety of notions in mythology among st all cultures, especially a black cat. Majority of humans have always associated black cat with something bad and evil. Moreover when i came across the cat named as Pluto, further in the story...it reminded me of the Roman mythology, the god of dead and underworld. Additionally I myself have always believed that cats have nine lives. The story soon converts into a plot full of surprises and heinous crimes committed by the narrator when the narrator develops addiction to alcohol.
From what I understand this was no ordinary addiction. At one point he referred to it as " fiend intemperance"(1155), translating into demonic/wicked level of alcoholism. Due to the changes brought about in his disposition, by his new habit, his pets started to ignore him, like most other alcoholic I have heard about, he started ti abuse his wife, his marital life started to disintegrate. The fact that all pets ignored him including his beloved cat made him furious that he cut one of the cat's eye out from socket, which I believe made him seem as
betrayed.
Not long after that heinous crime he was unable to bear the burden of his so called " docile and humane" nature which had transformed into alcoholic abuser. To me because of his way of thinking (perverseness), he made the deviant choice of hanging the cat on a tree and killing him.
On that very night a strange event occurs, his house burned down, leaving him with very little wealth.
The strangest part to my surprise is that a wall which had survived the fire held an image of cat like creature similar to Pluto. Although unable to differentiated if this was real or his mind was playing tricks on him, leaves the narrator shocked for a while.
This very event brought my mind to additional notion held by ancient Egyptians. Egyptians considered cats as sacred and thought cat brought wealth and good luck to family. They also believed killing a cat was one of the lowest crimes one could commit and killer of the cat would be killed for sure. How true is that in this situation? The narrator is poor and barely escaped the fire.
Not to long after murder of Pluto narrator finds himself a second cat. Greatly similar to Pluto in almost every characteristic but a area with white fur around the chest . Narrator's wife also pointed out that the cat "it also had been deprived of one eye"(1158). Doesn't the popular superstition about cat having nine lives come into play? Seems as though it does to
me.
Again because of constant reminder of what he had done to Pluto, the narrator seems to get agitated by the site of the cat and tries to kill the cat because of accidental tripping over the cat. But in this case, the wife stops him, now with almost psychopath mentality , the narrator kills his wife and buries her insider cellar's wall, along with the alive second cat.
The police show up unexpectedly to the house, and in a subtle way narrator admits to his crime, from what it seemed like when the story started the narrator was going to die tomorrow and that could be a death row