"From seeing only bars, his seeing is exhausted. It holds nothing, nothing more. To him, the world is bars, 100,000 bars, and behind the bars, nothing" (905).

I really like the punchiness of this prose. Good poetry, it really gives me the sense of the shocking bleakness of living in a cage.

There is no world for the panther outside of his cage.

"A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place your sight can knock on, echoing; but here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear" (910).

Reading this, I got the sense that the black cat's pelt is like a black hole--eerie.

Black holes have always fascinated (and terrified) me.