Animal Tales: "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe

In this story of cruelty and madness, a man's devotion to animals curdles into a violent rage he cannot explain or contain. Read the full text here.

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. sagacious
    acutely insightful and wise
    To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature of the intensity of the gratification thus derivable.
  2. paltry
    contemptibly small in amount or size
    There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
  3. fidelity
    the quality of being faithful
    There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
  4. malevolence
    wishing evil to others
    My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence...thrilled every fibre of my frame.
  5. equivocal
    open to question
    When reason returned with the morning...I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched.
  6. irrevocable
    incapable of being retracted
    And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS.
  7. unfathomable
    impossible to come to understand
    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...
  8. conflagration
    a very intense and uncontrolled fire
    It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration.
  9. aversion
    a feeling of intense dislike
    With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase.
  10. succumb
    give in, as to overwhelming force, influence, or pressure
    Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed.
  11. expedient
    a means to an end
    Finally I hit upon what I considered a far better expedient than either of these.
  12. felicity
    state of well-being characterized by contentment
    I looked upon my future felicity as secured.
Created on Sun Oct 21 11:20:10 EDT 2012 (updated Mon Aug 04 17:37:37 EDT 2025)

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