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Video Summary
Here is a summary of the entire story in a 10-minute video. Just the summary, citations can be found in the text below.
Summary and Citations
Narrator is telling us his story from prison. He's about to be executed, and he's trying to free his conscience: "But tomorrow I die, and today I would unburden my soul."
He starts by describing how he was this really nice, gentle person when he was younger. He was very fond of animals, loved them more than people. He had this special bond with them, and it was a huge part of his identity.
When he grew up, he married a woman who was also into animals. They had all sorts of pets - birds, goldfish, a dog, rabbits, a monkey... But one animal that stood out the most was this big black cat named Pluto.
Pluto wasn't just any cat. This cat was his absolute favorite, and they were almost like best friends. Pluto was smart, affectionate, and followed him everywhere he went. They had this unbreakable bond.
Things were great for a long time, but then things started to change. The guy got into drinking a lot. And as he drank more and more, his personality significantly deteriorated.
"I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others."
He went from being a kind and gentle person to someone who was mean, short-tempered, and violent. He started lashing out at his wife and even at the pets he once loved so much.
The animals, who used to be the center of his world, became targets for his anger, and he began to abuse them.
At first, he tried to keep his temper in check around Pluto. It was like he still had this tiny shred of decency left, and he couldn't bring himself to hurt his favorite pet. But that didn't last long.
One night, he came home totally drunk, and Pluto seemed to sense that something was not quite right. The cat started avoiding him.
This only intensified his anger. He tried to grab Pluto, and when the cat bit his hand out of fear, he completely lost control.
"The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer."
In a drunken rage, he pulled a penknife out of his pocket and cut out one of Pluto's eyes.
The next morning, when he sobered up, he felt this overwhelming guilt and horror at what he had done.
"And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS."
But the guilt didn't change anything. He says he felt bad, but it didn't stop him from spiraling further into this dark place.
Over time, Pluto started to recover, but he was obviously terrified of the narrator now. The cat, once so loving and attached, would run away whenever he came near.
This enraged him even more. Instead of feeling sorry or trying to make things right, he resented the cat for being afraid of him.
"I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin - a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it - if such a thing were possible - even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God."
One morning, in a fit of drunken rage, he grabs Pluto, drags him out to the garden, and hangs him from a tree until the cat is dead.
He did it with tears in his eyes, but he did it anyway, just because he could, to be cruel. It's like the last bit of humanity he had was gone.
"It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself - to offer violence to its own nature - to do wrong for the wrong's sake only - that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute."
That very night, his house catches fire. The fire is intense, and he, his wife, and a servant barely make it out alive. They lose everything in the blaze.
The next day, when the fire is finally out and the guy is walking through the ruins, he notices something strange and creepy.
One wall of the house somehow survived the fire, and on this wall is this outline of a gigantic cat with a noose around its neck. It's like a charcoal drawing burned into the plaster.
This throws him into a state of panic. He tries to explain it, saying maybe someone threw the dead cat into the house to wake him up during the fire, and that's how the image got imprinted on the wall.
This really gets under his skin, like it's some kind of haunting reminder of what he did.
After losing his home and still feeling haunted by what he did to Pluto, he starts looking for a replacement cat.
It looks like he's trying to make himself feel better, or maybe he just wants to fill the void.
One night, he's out drinking at his usual tavern, and he notices another black cat that looks almost exactly like Pluto, except for one thing - it has this white patch of fur on its chest.
The cat is just hanging around at the tavern, and he's instantly drawn to it. He asks around, but no one seems to know where the cat came from or who owns it. So, he decides to take the cat home.
At first, the cat seems like a perfect replacement for Pluto. It's loving and cuddly, always following him around. His wife is thrilled, because she loved Pluto and missed having a cat around.
"The cat followed me everywhere, becoming, to my distemper, the most irksome of companions."
But after a few days, he starts to notice some weird things. This new cat is also missing an eye, just like Pluto.
And that white patch on the cat's chest is not merely a random spot of fur - it distinctly resembles the shape of a gallows.
"Upon its breast, as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, was the image of a hideous - of a ghastly thing - of the GALLOWS!"
This deeply unsettles him, but he has already resolved to keep the cat.
As time goes on, his feelings toward the new cat start to shift. Affection turned into a kind of intense hatred and paranoia.
The cat is always underfoot, always watching him with that one eye, and he starts to feel like he's being haunted.
He gets more irritable, more aggressive, and his drinking gets even worse. Every time he sees the cat, he's reminded of Pluto and what he did.
But the cat seems to be attached to him even more than Pluto was. It follows him everywhere, even when he's trying to avoid it.
"Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates - the darkest and most evil of thoughts."
One day, he and his wife are walking down into the cellar, and the cat is following him like usual. As he's walking down the stairs, the cat gets under his feet and nearly trips him. This angers him a lot!
He grabs an axe that's lying around, and in a blind fit of rage, he lifts it up to kill the cat. But his wife steps in and grabs his arm, trying to stop him. She's begging him to calm down, to leave the cat alone.
But he's so caught up in his anger that instead of stopping, he turns the axe on his wife and buries it in her head.
She collapses and dies instantly, and he stands there in shock, staring at the consequences of his actions.
He's killed his wife, and now he has to figure out what to do. He doesn't panic, though. It's as if he's completely numb to the gravity of what just happened.
He starts thinking about how to hide the body, running through all these options in his head - should he cut her up and bury her in the yard? Maybe throw the body in the well? But then he gets this idea that seems perfect to him: he's going to hide her in the cellar wall.
He decides to build a new wall in the cellar and hide her body behind it. He grabs some bricks and mortar, and spends hours carefully sealing her up in this tomb.
He does it meticulously, making sure the wall looks just like the others in the cellar. Once he's done, he steps back and admires his work, feeling a twisted sense of pride that no one will ever find her.
He even tests the wall by knocking on it to make sure it sounds solid, just like any other wall.
For a few days, he's surprisingly calm. The cat is nowhere to be seen, and he starts to believe it must have fled, perhaps frightened away by the violent outburst.
Without the cat constantly reminding him of his sins, he feels a strange kind of peace for the first time in a long while. He sleeps soundly, free from the constant fear and anger that had been consuming him. In his mind, killing his wife and hiding her body somehow solved all his problems.
Three or four days after the murder, the police showed up. They've come to investigate his wife's disappearance.
The police search the house, going room by room, looking for any clues. They even make their way down to the cellar, where he still doesn't show any signs of panic. It seems as though his confidence only continues to grow.
They're checking everything, but they're not finding anything suspicious. The wall he built looks perfect, like it's been there for years.
In a final act of sheer arrogance, he casually mentions how well-built the house is, how sturdy the walls are. He even grabs a cane and taps on the wall right where his wife's body is hidden, talking about how solid the construction is.
But just as he taps the wall, this horrific, loud wailing sound erupts from behind it - a long, loud, inhuman shriek that fills the entire cellar.
The police are stunned, and he's frozen in place, horrified. The sound is unmistakable - it's the cat.
The police immediately tore down the wall, and there, standing on top of his wife's decaying corpse, is the black cat.
"I had walled the monster up within the tomb!"
Author: Summary King
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