Question

On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing. ...//I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.//
Why did the author most likely include the underlined sentence?
to explore the possibility of the fire smoldering long before the cat was dead
to negate any idea that there is a supernatural link between the cat and the fire
to explain how the cat's death may be a remote factor in the fire
to disprove the connection between the fire, the cat, and the narrator

Answer 1

In the excerpt from "The Black Cat", by Edgar Allan Poe, the reason why the author most likely included the underlined sentence is to explain how the cat's death may be a remote factor in the fire.

First the narrator, under the influence of alcohol intoxication, grabs the cat from the throat and "...cut one of its eyes from the socket!" When the cat recovers "...I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;". The narrator wants to explain how things happen to make it clear if the black cat could be a factor of the fire.