Cat Striking Back

To the memory of Willow

She lives on in the wild clowder

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…consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute…my wonder and my terror were extreme…I could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat…I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart…which give direction to the character of man.

– Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat”