He was afraid of me and bit my hand. Suddenly, I was not myself any more. Someone else was in my body: someone evil, and mad with drink! I took my knife from my pocket, held the poor animal by his neck and cut out one of his eyes. The next morning, my mind was full of pain and horror when I woke up. I was deeply sorry. I could not understand how I could do such an evil thing. But drink soon helped me to forget. Slowly the cat got better. Soon he felt no more pain. There was now only an ugly dry hole where the eye once was. He began to go round the house as usual again. He never came near me now, of course, and he ran away when I went too close. I knew he didn't love me any more. At first I was sad. Then, slowly, I started to feel angry, and I did another terrible thing . . . I had to do it — I could not stop myself. I did it with a terrible sadness in my heart — because I knew it was evil. And that was why I did it — yes! I did it because I knew it was evil. What did I do? I caught the cat and hung him by his neck from a tree until he was dead. That night I woke up suddenly — my bed was on fire. I heard people outside shouting, 'Fire! Fire!' Our house was burning! I, my wife and our servant were lucky to escape. We stood and watched as the house burned down to the ground. There was nothing left of the building the next morning. All the walls fell down during the night, except one — a wall in the middle of the house. I realized why this wall did not burn: because there was new plaster on it. The plaster was still quite wet. I was surprised to see a crowd of people next to the wall. They were talking, and seemed to be quite excited. I went closer and looked over their shoulders. I saw a black shape in the new white plaster. It was the shape of large cat, hanging by its neck. I looked at the shape with complete horror