The Cat in the Hat

the cat in the hat, enjoying his day

“I wore a hat, but did I get a book about it? No! This is an outrage!”

~ Oscar Wilde on The Cat in the Hat

“It's made entirely out of compressed children and kittens.”

~ The Cat on The Hat

Inspired by The Wheel of Time, The Cat in the Hat is a notoriously dramatic book, full of tension, fear, clutter, and a whole lot of sex.

Characters

The characters are elegantly woven into the roller coaster plot, causing the book to flow like a river of similes. First there is the titular cat, a godless, dirty cat, whose major goal in life is to find a way to bring the great Satan from hell to destroy Earth and its surroundings. The character of the cat is juxtaposed by that of 'Sally' and 'That other kid', who perfectly represent the greatness of a little child's heart (or in this case two little children's hearts) - a heart(s) which is(/are) filled with Good and not Evil. Next, there is The Great Fish of Greatness, whom the children often seek for shelter from the menacing Cat. To aid the cat in his nefarious schemes there are the Cat's evil henchmen, Thing 1 and Thing 666. These minions help the Cat on his path to destruction by jumping out of boxes and such. Finally, there is the character that everyone refers to as 'The Great Mother Figure'. The Great Mother Figure is the only thing the Evil Cat fears, for it is all-powerful. This was one of the factors in the decision to have the book banned in several schools, as this book clearly advocates Goddess worship, a most un-Christian and therefore un-American idea.

The Cat and associates during the hippie commune years.

Setting

The characters are pretty damn amazing, it can't be denied, but the setting also causes this book to be dramatic and tensionalistic. As everybody knows, the midevil ages were filled with a much amount of evil and middleness and lots of alliterate peepul. This story does not take place in the midi-evil ages, but I still think it does a quite good job of creating drama and tension. The story takes place in a house of sorts. A horrible house with torture devices in the basement, boxes (of bad things) in the attic, and a very dirty sink in the bathroom.

Some Quotes from the Book

Here is a quote that perfectly describes how insanely evil and twisted the Cat is:

“It is fun to have fun.”

~ the Evil Cat Menace on page 18.

What kind of sick son of a bitch would say something as cruel as that?

Here is a very dramatic, heroic quote from The All-Knowing Fish:

“This is not a good game.”

~ the All-Knowing Fish on page 22.

Ah, so heroic! So brave! So justicical! Here is a quote from one of the one out of two true heroes of the book:

“With my net, I can get them I bet. I bet, with my net, I can get those Things yet!”

~ the Hero Named I on page 50.

Such fearless and non-fearing, that statement is filled with. So much that in 1988 Congress almost passed a national "I (from The Cat in the Hat) Remembrance Day". Unfortunately, they abandoned the idea and decided to pass "World AIDS Day" instead - a decision they have regretted since.

Disarming cats in hats is a two step process:
1. Steal the hat, rendering them hatless and power-drained,
2. Brutally slaughter them with a butcher knife, just to be sure.

Controversy

The cat in the hat doing a bong.

On a late September afternoon a teenage boy went into a random person's house, dressed up as a cat, and burglarized the place, with the result that the house looked very much like the one in the story before the mom got home. Clothes, toys, electronics, valuable jewelry, and the contents of someone's wallet, as well as assorted papers, were scattered everywhere as if he was looking for something random which he just couldn't find, such as the portal to another dimension. This was most annoying to the homeowners upon their return at finding their Playstation 3 unplugged, and their jewelry and credit cards on the floor. A weird design was drawn on the floor in red crayon, and all the boxes in the house were opened, as if he were looking for Thing One and Thing Two. The book was banned by several Boards of Education, and by a few boards of wood, for fear that it would influence young impressionable children under the age of 18. For if one idiot could be influenced negatively by this book, who knows how many other young idiots might read this book and learn how to make mischief incompetently?

See also

• Horton Hires a Ho
• Cat-Toast Device
• Cat's Meow
• The Putz Who Stole Hanukkah
• UnPoetia:The Catwoman in the Hat
• UnBooks:Dr Seuss' "The Git who Stoned Christians"

External links

• Musical version of The Cat in the Hat
• A professional review of The Cat in the Hat