This statement made by the narrator in “The Black Cat” at the beginning of the story is important because it foreshadows events that later happen in the story. Pluto, the black cat, loves the narrator and follows him everywhere he goes. Before the change in his temperance, the narrator alone fed the cat. Later on, after a change in behavior which he claims was brought on by his overindulgence in alcohol, the narrator develops a great dislike for the black cat, a dislike that pushes him to cut out its eye and finally hang it on a tree.
The narrator’s actions totally contradict those of a loving, “docile and tender of heart” pet owner. In fact, instead of being touched by the cat’s “unselfish and self-sacrificing love,” the narrator loathes the animal even more. The narrator is full of contradictions. He says that he is not mad, yet...
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displays insanity through his perverse actions. He says that nothing equals the unselfish love of a pet, yet loathes his pets for loving him. It is particularly strange that the death of Pluto increases his fixation on cats. This fixation lessens only after the death of his wife and subsequent disappearance of the second cat. After this, he says that he was able to sleep really well, in spite of the “weight of murder upon his soul.”
Also, the quote appears to imply that the narrator has, in the past, been disappointed by human friendships, which he describes as “paltry” and fickle.
The quotation provides us with further evidence of an unreliable narrator. If someone is expressing such love for animals, it becomes hard to believe that they'd actually go ahead and do what the narrator did. However, the quotation is also revealing in the sense that it provides us with an insight into what kind of character the narrator is, aside from his unreliability. He's clearly one of life's misfits, someone who has been the object of scorn and incomprehension from society ever since he was a child. The companionship and acceptance he receives from cats provide him with a refuge from the outside world and the kind of loving warmth he simply cannot get from other human beings.
There is also an element of ominous foreshadowing in the quotation. The narrator's references to the "unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute" point towards a transference of vulnerability from the narrator to the cat. Immediately we sense that, for all the narrator's professed love of animals, he will come to abuse the unconditional loving trust bestowed upon him by the cat. This narrator is unreliable in more than one sense of the word.
Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" is narrated by a man who says he is going to die tomorrow so he wants to unburden his soul today. Unfortunately, he is not a particularly reliable narrator, as we learn throughout the story.
This quote, however, does relate a truth to which most animal lovers can relate.
There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
The narrator is making the point that a pet loves in a way that is much more unselfish and less self-centered than most people choose to love.Those who have a pet intuitively know that our pets will forgive our transgressions and love them despite our flaws, which is not always true of our human friends who are not faithful and true. Often human friendship is gossamer-thin, like a spider web, and it does not last or linger. So, the narrator's statement is generally valid in life.
What is significant about this statement, though, is the great irony it expresses. While the narrator may once have loved his pets as his pets loved him, he abuses them so terribly that they turn on him--or at least he believes they turn against him. Their "unselfish and self-sacrificing love" fails to move his heart, though he clearly claims it does, and eventually his actions are so egregious that even his loving creatures turn on him. He is the unfaithful one, the one who offers only a "paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity."