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What mark did the second cat in "The Black Cat" have on its chest?

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The second cat in "The Black Cat" initially has an "indefinite" white splotch on its chest. Over time, the narrator perceives this mark as transforming into the shape of a gallows, symbolizing his impending doom. This ominous sign foreshadows the narrator's fate, as the cat's presence ultimately leads the police to discover his murdered wife, resulting in his arrest and death sentence.

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After the narrator hangs his first black cat, Pluto, from a tree in the garden, knowing he is committing a truly vile sin, he discovers a similar cat in the bar where he often drinks. It is as large as Pluto had been, but Pluto was all black, and this cat has "a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast." Initially, then, the white patch has no discernible shape.

As time passes, the narrator begins to dislike this cat as well, and he soon grows disgusted with it. It, too, has only one eye, and it begins to like the narrator more and more. The narrator reminds us that the white mark had, at one time, possessed an "indefinite" shape, but, slowly, "it had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline [. . .], the image of a hideous—of a ghastly thing—of...

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the gallows!" Thus, the white "splotch" eventually evolves into a shape that looks like the apparatus by which one is hanged.

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At first, the mark on the cat is only a white patch. Later, however, the narrator thinks it has changed shape to appear like the gallows.

The change in the cat's marking likely foreshadows the narrator's fate. At the beginning of the tale, he says it is the last night of his life because he is being put to death the next day for murdering his wife. A gallows is a construct where a person is hanged. It usually includes a platform, two upright posts, and a beam connecting them from which the person is hanged. 

The cat with the mark of the gallows is what ultimately leads the police to find the narrator's murdered wife. When the police are preparing to leave the basement where she is buried, the cat meows in response to the man knocking on the wall. When the police tear down the wall, they find the body of his murdered wife with the cat on top of her. The narrator is taken into custody and ultimately sentenced to death. 

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