In Poe’s stories, the characters seem to have very bizarre and violent reactions towards seemingly mundane circumstances. In “The Black Cat” the narrator owns a cat that he has had for sometime. When he comes home one night intoxicated he thinks his cat is avoiding him and stabs it in the eye for biting him. The sight and fearfulness of the cat becomes a regretful reminder of his cruel actions.
But, as the text states, “first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to irritation.” The narrator’s guilt turns to irritation, which leads to murder. This is a chilling transition of emotions which Poe conveys though first person narration, giving the feeling we’re in the character’s mind among the inner turmoil. Poe has turned the “normal” of pet ownership into the “abnormal” by putting the reader inside the mind of a guilt ridden unraveling of a man grip on reality.
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