Refer to explorations in literature for a complete version of this story.
which quotation from "the black cat" best supports the inference that even though the narrator explains how the image of the cat appears after the fire, he does not wholly believe it?
a. “for months i could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; …”
b. “although i thus readily accounted to my reason,…it did not the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy.”
c. “when i first beheld this apparition—for i could scarcely regard it as less—my wonder and my terror were extreme.”
d. “i went so far as to regret the loss of the animal,…”

 I believe the correct answer is C. "When I first beheld this apparition - for I could scarcely regard it as less - my wonder and my terror were extreme."

In the A sentence, he admits the powerful influence of the phantasm on it, but it was only a phantasm. The B sentence tries to reconcile the two views, saying that the event was explainable but nonetheless awkward and uncanny. The D sentence doesn't deal with this topic at all.

Finally, the C sentence depicts the narrator's ambiguous feeling most accurately. He calls it "an apparition", but feels an immediate urge to support this view with reason - it is so frightening that it has to be an apparition. But the very fact that he has to justify his using the word in front of his own frightened self, tells us that he really has a hard time believing it was just an apparition.