Alcohol was the vice that the transformed the narrator in Edgar Allen Poe's, "The Black Cat" from a normal, loving life into a world of madness. "Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character ”through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance ”had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse" (Poe 718). As the story unfolds we see how the narrators' life has been critically altered through alcohol, clouding his judgment, altering his emotions, and giving him an imagined sense of power. Under the spell of uncontrolled rage, the once loved objects of his life have become objects of hate and now, one paid has paid the price of his insanity with an ax. As the narrators' life becomes more and more influenced by the effects of alcohol, he begins to notice the changes himself in regards to the second black cat who had taken up residence in his home. Instead of fondness for the creature as was once his personality, he began to feel something different within. "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 bitterness of hatred" (Poe 721). In comparison, the narrator's feelings for his ever-loving and loyal wife were inconspicuously being changed as well. Everything that he once was had become blurred by the effects of the alcohol that he consumed. In his words, "And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere humanity" (Poe 722). He had allowed the device of alcohol to take control of his being and in doing so everything that he loved had changed into rage. Upon accompanying the narrator to the cellar, his ever-loving and uncomplaining wife took action as he lifted the ax to kill the cat and ins