What motifs are found in "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe?

To my mind, the most powerful symbol that there is in this
chilling short story by Edgar Allen Poe is the black cat itself, which is obviously
important enough to warrant being used for the title. Note how the story progresses it
seems to symbolise for the narrator a constant curse that is always present and always
dogs his every step - a reminder of his murderous instincts that he cannot forget or
ignore:

And
now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast -
whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed - a brute beast to work out for me - for me
a man, fashoined in the image of the High God - so much of insufferable wo! Alas!
neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the
creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of
unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight
- an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off - incumbent eternally upon my
heart!

Note the way that in
the narrator's mind the black cat comes to dominate him psychologically in a somewhat
disturbing fashion. As we read on, it is his desire to kill the black cat that leads to
his slaughter of his wife, and it is the black cat that at last condemns him to hell for
his crimes, as the black cat reveals his murder and therefore condemns him to the
gallows.