Celebrating National Black Cat Month with 13 Days of Halloween
Dancing in the Shadows: A Tribute to Anne Rice [https://amzn.to/40g2LRn] edited by Elaine Pascale and Rebecca Rowland [from Yuriko Publishing] will be free on Kindle from Wednesday, October 25, 2023 to Sunday, October 29, 2023. If you download the book and read to the end, money is earned for the Animal Rescue of New Orleans.
100% of all proceeds from sales and Kindle Page Reads goes to ARNO as a tribute to Anne Rice. It was the shelter she loved, and she frequently donated to their rescue cats program. Everyone donated their stories, editing, art and more for this project. Cover and interior art by Jeanette Andromeda.
Authors include: C.W. Blackwell, Morgan Sylvia, Greg Herren, Holly Rae Garcia, Douglas Ford, Kristi Petersen Schoonover, Gordon B. White, Tim Mendees, Stephanie Ellis, Scotty Milder, Holley Cornetto, Lamont A. Turner, KC Grifant, Lee Andrew Forman, Anthony S. Buoni, Trish Wilson, Angela Yuriko Smith, Christine Lajewski and E. F. Schraeder.
“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe pt 7
For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but, I know not how or why it was, its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually, very gradually, I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence.
What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.
With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly, let me confess it at once, by absolute dread of the beast.
Part 8 of 12 to be continued tomorrow…
