Catarina

Catarina was the beloved tortoiseshell cat of the writer Edgar Allan Poe and his young wife Virginia during the impoverished final years of their life together in the 1840s. By several accounts she was a constant household companion, devoted to Virginia in particular. In the bitter cold of the Poes' poverty, with the family unable to afford enough fuel, Catarina is said to have curled up on the consumptive Virginia's chest to help keep her warm — a small, faithful presence in a household shadowed by illness and want. The cat's literary legacy, however, comes from the darker side of Poe's imagination. His 1843 short story "The Black Cat," one of the most famous tales of guilt and horror in American literature, is widely believed to have drawn on his life with Catarina, even though the fictional cat, Pluto, meets a terrible fate at the hands of its narrator. The contrast is striking: a real cat remembered for warmth and loyalty, transmuted by a troubled genius into an enduring symbol of dread. Catarina reportedly survived Virginia, who died in 1847, by only a short time — a quiet end to a life spent at the side of one of literature's most haunted figures.