The narrator, an unreliable and alcoholic man, becomes increasingly cruel and violent towards his beloved black cat, Pluto. One night, in a drunken rage, he gouges out the cat's eye and later hangs it from a tree. The narrator's descent into madness and brutality is mirrored by the appearance of a new black cat, identical to Pluto, which seems to haunt him and drive him to further violence.
As the narrator's mental state deteriorates, he becomes convinced that the new cat is a manifestation of his own guilt and is conspiring against him. In a fit of rage, he murders his wife and walls up her body in the cellar, only to be haunted by the sound of the cat's incessant meowing, which seems to emanate from within the wall. The story culminates
