What happened the night the narrator hung Pluto? Was this a coincidence?

The night the narrator hung Pluto, his house and everything he owned went up in flames. He, his wife, and a servant barely made it out of the house with their lives, but everything else was destroyed. Poe never gives an explanation for how the fire started, so the readers are left to wonder; he does, however, describe a certain event after the fire that certainly hints that it had something to do with the cat. Only one wall survived the fire, and upon this wall, there was the image of a cat. The narrator gives a scientific explanation for the surprising image, saying that someone had thrown the cat, which had still been hanging in the tree, through his bedroom window to alert him about the fire; then, due to a combination of the lime from the wall plaster, the flames, and the ammonia from the cat's dead body, its image was burned onto the wall. But that information is given to us as the narrator's supposition, not as an actual explanation.

In the end, the question of whether it was a coincidence or not depends on what kind of person you are. If you are a superstitious person by nature, then the fire was not a coincidence; it was retribution for what the narrator did to Pluto. However, if you are a more logical, scientifically minded person, then the fire was just a coincidence, and the image of the cat was exactly what the narrator supposed it was.