Story-line:
The man begins to drink much and this changes him. He begins to maltreat his pets. Soon, his favorite cat Pluto experiences it too.
One night returning home much intoxicated, the man fancied that the cat avoided his presence. He siezed him, when in the fright of his violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon his hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed him. He took from his waistcoast-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket.
When he waked up in the morning, he experienced a sentiment half of horror and half of remorse for the crime. But the feeling was so feeble, that his soul remained untouched. He again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed. In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. It was horrible view at his eye but it didn’t appear to suffer. It went about the house as usual, but fled at his approach.
For a little while, the man was sorry, that the cat doesn’t like him anymore, but the feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then a spirit of perverseness obsessed him. One morning, in cold blood he slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree.
That night he was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The whole house was blazing. His wife, a servant, and hisself hardly escaped from fire. All his wealth burned and he resigned to despair. Next day he went to look at ruins of his house. All walls had fallen in, with one exception. This exception was compartment wall in the middle of the house, against which had rested head of his bed. The plastering here resisted the fire. A dense crowd was collected about this wall and they were watching something in the middle of it. He approached and saw a bas-relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. There was a rope about the animal’s neck. It was real wonder for him and he remained terrified. But then he revived. He had hung the cat in a garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the crowd, by some one of whom must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into his chamber. This had probably been done with the view of arousing him from sleep.