The falling of other walls had compressed the cat into a substance of freshly spread plaster, the lime of which, with flames and ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as he saw it.
Although he readily accounted this to the reason, he couldn’t do so with his conscience. For months he couldn’t rid hisself of the phantasm of the cat and he had feeling that seemed like remorse. He regreted loss of the animal, and started to look for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance to supply its place.
One night he found it. It was a cat exactly similar to the previous one, with one exception. Pluto hadn’t any white hair upon any portion of his body and this cat had a large indefinie splotch of white, covering his breast.
The cat seemed to like the man. This was, what he was looking for. He wanted to buy it from the landlord, but he claimed, he had never seen it before. When he wanted to go home, the animal wanted to go with him. When they arrived at home it domesticated itself at once and became immediately a great favorite with his wife.
But soon he started to feel dislike to it. He didn’t know why. It was just reverse of what he anticipated. This slowly rose to hatred. He avoided the cat. A certain sense of shame and remembrance of his former deed prevented him from physically abusing it. As the cat was more familiar to him, he was more furious. In certain moments he wanted to kill it with one blow. But he couldn’t do that. Partly because of memory of former crime, but chiefly becouse of dread of the cat. His wife realized that the white splotch on it’s breast was getting shape of the gallows. The animal made him so many tortures that he started to scheme how to kill it.
One day he went with his wife to cellar to bring something from it. The cat followed them down the steep stairs and nearly throwing him headlong, exasperated him to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting in his wrath the childish dread which had hitherto stayed his mind, he aimed a blow on animal, which of course would have proved instantly fatal. But this blow was arrested by the hand of his wife. Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demonical, he withdrew his hand from her grasp, and burried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without groan.
Just after the murder, with entire deliberation, he began to think where to conceal the body. He determined to wall it up in the cellar. He made it so perfectly that no eye would detect anything suspicious. The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed.
Then he wanted to find the cat which caused him so much wretchedness. It seemed that it had run away, alarmed at the violence of his previous anger.