50 Fun Facts About Cat's Cradle

In Cat's Cradle, ice-nine is first imagined as a cure for which battlefield nuisance facing soldiers?

Mud was the complaint: an officer was sick of troops wallowing in it, so Felix Hoenikker imagined a crystal that would turn it solid. The same crystal could lock up every ocean on Earth.

Which rock band named its music publishing company after ice-nine, the doomsday substance in Cat's Cradle?

The Grateful Dead called their publishing company Ice Nine. Jerry Garcia was fan enough to buy the film rights to another Vonnegut novel, The Sirens of Titan, though he never got it filmed.

The University of Chicago accepted Cat's Cradle as Kurt Vonnegut's master's thesis in which academic field?

Anthropology was the degree, granted about 25 years after he left Chicago without it. The department had rejected his earlier thesis ideas, one of them on the shapes of stories.

In Cat's Cradle, Bokononists perform the ritual of boko-maru by pressing together which parts of the body?

The soles of their feet meet, bare, in what the faith treats as its highest act of worship. Mona refuses to marry the narrator unless she may go on sharing the ritual with others.

The opening sentence of Cat's Cradle echoes the famous first line of which classic novel?

Moby-Dick begins with its narrator telling readers what to call him, and Vonnegut's narrator does the same. Both storytellers also live through a disaster that kills nearly everyone around them.

The narrator of Cat's Cradle plans a book on what prominent people were doing as which city was bombed?

Hiroshima is his subject, and the working title is The Day the World Ended. Chasing the story of a scientist behind the weapon leads him to the three Hoenikker children instead.

In Cat's Cradle, Hazel Crosby urges every fellow native of which US state to call her Mom?

Indiana is her badge of kinship, and Bokononism mocks such pride as an empty bond. Vonnegut, born in the state himself, was teasing his own tribe of Hoosiers.

In Cat's Cradle, what gruesome penalty officially awaits anyone caught practising Bokononism on San Lorenzo?

Impalement on a hook is the law, yet almost nobody suffers it, because nearly the whole island, dictator included, follows the banned faith in secret.

Once the seas turn solid at the climax of Cat's Cradle, which violent weather ravages the Earth?

Tornadoes fill the sky for days, while the narrator and Mona wait them out beneath the palace. They climb out to an island where almost nobody is left alive.

Ilium, the laboratory town in Cat's Cradle, shares its name with the Latin name for which ancient city?

Troy was Ilium to the Romans, a grand name for Vonnegut's invented factory town in New York State. He set several other novels and stories in the same place.

In the first sentence of Cat's Cradle, the narrator asks readers to call him by which biblical name?

Jonah is the name he asks for, though his parents called him John. After that first page, neither name is ever used in the novel again.

In Cat's Cradle, what is the Bokononist word for a team of people unknowingly doing God's will together?

Karass is the word, and the narrator counts the three Hoenikker children among the members of his own. Bokonon adds that anyone who thinks he understands God's plan is a fool, himself included.

Which instrument does the lonely Angela Hoenikker play with startling brilliance in Cat's Cradle?

Clarinet music is her one escape, and it becomes her end: after the catastrophe she blows on a contaminated mouthpiece and is turned to ice-nine.

Newt Hoenikker, the youngest of the family in Cat's Cradle, devotes himself to which art form?

Painting is his pastime, and his canvases are scratchy black abstracts. One of them, he says, shows the string figure of the title, in which he can see neither cat nor cradle.

In Cat's Cradle, what job does a nervous Frank Hoenikker pass on to the narrator on San Lorenzo?

The presidency was meant for Frank, the dying dictator's chosen heir, but he dreads public life. The narrator accepts once he learns that marriage to Mona comes with the post.

What crashes into the cliff beneath the palace in Cat's Cradle, tipping the frozen body of "Papa" Monzano into the sea?

A fighter plane catches fire during an air show and hits the cliff below the palace, and part of the building slides into the sea with the body. Every ocean, river and spring on Earth then locks solid.

Ilium, the Hoenikkers' city in Cat's Cradle, is also where Billy Pilgrim lives in which later novel?

Slaughterhouse-Five makes Billy Pilgrim an optometrist in Ilium, the same town where the Hoenikkers grew up. The place closely resembles Schenectady, where Vonnegut once worked in publicity.

Kurt Vonnegut drew the research laboratory in Cat's Cradle from his publicity job at which real company?

General Electric paid him to interview its scientists and turn their work into good stories. He came away feeling that the older ones did not care how their discoveries were used.

In Cat's Cradle, why does Bokonon ask for his own religion to be outlawed on San Lorenzo?

To make it more alluring, Bokonon has his faith banned and goes into pretend hiding in the jungle. The trick works: nearly everyone on the island becomes a secret believer.

In Cat's Cradle, which illness is slowly killing "Papa" Monzano before he swallows ice-nine?

Cancer has him bedridden and in agony, so he ends things with the sliver of ice-nine he wears in a cylinder round his neck. His doctor touches the body and is turned to ice too.

H. Lowe Crosby flies to San Lorenzo in Cat's Cradle hoping to move his factory making which product?

Bicycles are his trade, and he wants cheap island labour that will not answer back. He and his wife Hazel end up among the handful of people who outlive the catastrophe.

In Cat's Cradle, many of the sacred verses in The Books of Bokonon are written as which kind of song?

Calypsos carry much of Bokonon's teaching, a nod to the Caribbean setting. In 2008 a New York theatre company staged the whole novel as a musical in the same style.

In the final lines of Cat's Cradle, Bokonon says that if he were younger he would write a history of what?

Human stupidity would be his subject, and he pictures lying down with the book on the island's highest peak. There he would swallow ice-nine and die making a rude gesture at God.

Cat's Cradle was shortlisted in 1964 for which honour given to the year's best science fiction novel?

Hugo Award voters shortlisted it, as they had The Sirens of Titan before it. Vonnegut himself thought the science fiction label too limiting a description of his work.

The idea behind ice-nine in Cat's Cradle was first offered in the 1930s to which visiting British author?

H. G. Wells was touring the laboratory when a chemist pitched him a story about ice that stays solid at room temperature. He never used it, so Vonnegut later claimed the idea for himself.

Which Bokononist word in Cat's Cradle names a proud but meaningless group, such as a nation?

Granfalloon is the label, and Vonnegut liked it enough to put it in the title of a 1974 essay collection. The members of one share little beyond a name.

In Cat's Cradle, which Bokononist word means the harmless untruths that believers are urged to live by?

Foma are the comforting lies at the heart of the faith, and Bokonon cheerfully admits that his whole religion is built on them. The island's poverty, he decided, was past curing by truth.

Horlick Minton, who gives a bitter speech on war in Cat's Cradle, comes to San Lorenzo in which post?

US ambassador is his new post, years after he was fired when a letter by his wife got him branded soft on communism. Minutes after his speech mourning young soldiers, he and his wife are swept into the sea hand in hand.

In Cat's Cradle, what does the reformed millionaire Julian Castle run in the jungle of San Lorenzo?

A charity hospital, the House of Hope and Mercy in the Jungle, is where Castle has spent twenty years treating the island's poor. The narrator's magazine assignment is to profile him.

With Bokononism outlawed in Cat's Cradle, which religion does San Lorenzo officially claim as its own?

Christianity is the official creed, which is why a minister is sent for when the dictator lies dying. "Papa" Monzano sends him away and takes the Bokononist last rites instead.

In Cat's Cradle, Newt Hoenikker's fiancée Zinka, a dancer, turns out to be working as what?

A Soviet spy all along, Zinka romanced Newt to steal a share of his ice-nine and took it back to her country. His sister's husband had already passed a chip of it to the United States.

Which boyhood pastime of Frank Hoenikker in Cat's Cradle kept him for hours in a shop basement in Ilium?

Building models was his obsession, and his masterpiece was a miniature country laid out beneath a hobby shop. The long hours there also hid his affair with the owner's wife.

In Cat's Cradle, what does Marvin Breed sell in the Ilium shop where the narrator spots his own surname?

Tombstones are his business, and one unsold stone angel carries the narrator's family name. Marvin also recalls that the Hoenikker children bought their mother's towering monument with their father's prize money.

On which night of the year does Felix Hoenikker die in Cat's Cradle, leaving ice-nine to his children?

Christmas Eve is the night, and his three children quietly divide the lethal crystal among themselves. Each later trades a share for something they crave: a husband, a lover, a job.

In Cat's Cradle, Claire Minton claims she can read an author's character from which part of a book?

The index is her speciality, since compiling them is her profession. Leafing through the one in Philip Castle's history of San Lorenzo, she draws firm conclusions about his private life.

In Cat's Cradle, what was the birth name of Bokonon before the island dialect of San Lorenzo reshaped it?

Lionel Boyd Johnson washed up on the island after a shipwreck, and the local accent turned his surname into Bokonon. He first hoped to create a utopia there before settling for a religion.

Earl McCabe, who helps seize San Lorenzo in Cat's Cradle, is a deserter from which branch of the US military?

The Marines lost him in 1922, when he walked away from his post in Haiti and was shipwrecked on the island. Its banner and its money both commemorate his rank.

Bernard Vonnegut, whose science fed the ice-nine of Cat's Cradle, pioneered which weather technique?

Cloud seeding with silver iodide was Bernard's discovery in 1946: a sprinkling of crystals makes ice form through a whole bank of vapour. His brother Kurt borrowed the chain reaction for his doomsday substance.

Biologists borrow ice-nine from Cat's Cradle to explain how which agents of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease multiply?

Prions are misfolded proteins that force healthy copies to misfold in turn, just as one fictional crystal converts all the water it touches. No real form of ice behaves that way.

In Cat's Cradle, Felix Hoenikker dies in his chair, after toying with ice-nine, in which coastal spot?

Cape Cod is where he nods off for the last time, in a rocking chair, after experimenting in the kitchen. Vonnegut knew the place, having lived there and opened a Saab dealership that went out of business.

In Cat's Cradle, what do Angela and Newt Hoenikker carry their ice-nine in on the trip to San Lorenzo?

Thermos flasks hold their shares, and both clutch them when a noise in the night sends the household running. On the night their father died, the three children had first sorted the chips into Mason jars.

Kurt Vonnegut based Felix Hoenikker in Cat's Cradle on which celebrated chemist, his brother's senior colleague?

Irving Langmuir struck Vonnegut as utterly indifferent to how his discoveries might be used, caring only that a truth was beautiful. Felix shares that chilling innocence.

Mona Aamons Monzano of Cat's Cradle, the dictator's adopted daughter, had a father from which country?

Finland was the homeland of her father, the architect Nestor Aamons. "Papa" Monzano adopted her to boost his popularity and turned her into the island's poster girl.

In Cat's Cradle, Dr. von Koenigswald tends "Papa" Monzano to atone for his years as a physician at which camp?

Auschwitz employed him for six years as an SS doctor, and he now works among the island's sick as penance. By one reckoning the debt will take him more than a thousand years to clear.

In Cat's Cradle, the inseparable Mintons illustrate which Bokononist term for a tightly bound pair of people?

Duprass is the term, and Bokonon says its two members usually die within a week of each other. The Mintons manage it in the same instant, hand in hand.

Which Bokononist word in Cat's Cradle means the pivot, such as ice-nine, around which a group's lives revolve?

Wampeter is the word, and Vonnegut's own example of one was the Holy Grail. In the book, ice-nine plays that part for the narrator and the Hoenikkers.

San Lorenzo's currency in Cat's Cradle is named after which military rank held by the deserter Earl McCabe?

Corporal is both his rank and the name of the coin, worth half a US dollar. The national banner honours him too, with a set of chevrons on a blue field.

The national anthem of San Lorenzo in Cat's Cradle borrows the tune of which familiar folk song?

Home on the Range supplies the melody, a fitting borrowing for an island whose dictator is a staunch US ally. Even its coins are named after a runaway serviceman from the States.

In Cat's Cradle, what killed San Lorenzo's Hundred Martyrs to Democracy as they sailed off to war?

A German submarine sank their ship just outside the harbour, killing all hundred men. The island marks the loss with a yearly holiday, the setting for the novel's final catastrophe.

Which Hollywood star's production company optioned the film rights to Cat's Cradle in 2005?

Leonardo DiCaprio's company, Appian Way, took the option, and James V. Hart, who wrote the screenplay for Contact, was linked to the script along with his son Jake.