50 Fun Facts About The Cat in the Hat

Which two colors stripe the tall hat worn by the Cat in Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat?

Red and white stripes made the hat famous enough that the Cat became Dr. Seuss's signature creation and a mascot for Dr. Seuss Enterprises.

Which Canadian comedian played the title role, under heavy makeup, in the 2003 film The Cat in the Hat?

Mike Myers said the book was the first he ever read, yet the film he made of it was panned by critics.

What is the girl called in The Cat in the Hat, the only one of the two children Dr. Seuss names?

Sally is a silent observer in the first book, but in the sequel she takes over the fish's job of warning against the Cat.

What kind of weather keeps the two children stuck indoors at the start of The Cat in the Hat?

Rain and cold explain the boredom in a few words, and the entire story then takes place indoors, without the children once leaving the house.

What color is the bathtub stain the Cat spreads around the house in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back?

Pink has tempted scholars into Cold War readings: several have compared the ever-spreading stain to communism.

What color is the wild hair of Thing One and Thing Two, the Cat's helpers in The Cat in the Hat?

Blue is one of the few colors in the whole book: Dr. Seuss drew it in a limited palette, which makes the Things' hair stand out.

The Cat in the Hat was written to replace dull school primers starring which well-behaved pair?

Dick and Jane ruled first-grade classrooms at the time, and Dr. Seuss later said this was the book he was proudest of for helping to finish them off.

In The Cat in the Hat, what do Thing One and Thing Two fly indoors, knocking pictures off the walls?

Kites turn the Things' visit into chaos: their strings tangle through the rooms until the fish spots the mother on her way home.

Into which ancient language was The Cat in the Hat translated for an edition published in 2000?

Latin got its own edition, titled Cattus Petasatus, one of more than a dozen languages the book has appeared in; within three years of publication it was already out in French, Chinese and Swedish.

What does the Cat ride back in on to clear up the mess at the end of The Cat in the Hat?

A machine that picks up everything lets the Cat put the house right and slip away just before the mother walks in.

On the tip of which object does the Cat first balance the children's fish in The Cat in the Hat?

An umbrella is only the start: the Cat keeps adding household objects to the balancing act until he topples over and drops the lot.

In The Cat in the Hat, what is the Cat standing on when his tower of balanced objects crashes down?

A ball makes the stunt as unstable as possible, and the image stuck: cartoonists have drawn both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in the same pose.

Where does the fish land when the Cat's balancing act collapses in Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat?

In a teapot, safe but furious, the fish scolds the Cat for the mess and again urges the children to send him away.

What does the Cat carry in with Thing One and Thing Two shut inside it in The Cat in the Hat?

A box, big enough to hold both Things, is also where the Cat packs them away again once the children's mother is seen coming home.

With what are Thing One and Thing Two caught once the mother is seen heading home in The Cat in the Hat?

A net swung by the brother ends the rampage, and the Cat, apparently ashamed, shuts the Things away and carries them out.

In The Cat in the Hat, which new, polka-dotted belonging of the mother's do the Things sweep up?

A dress suffers in the sequel too: there the Cat grabs one of the mother's to wipe a stain out of the bathtub.

Which sudden sound do the two bored children hear just before the Cat walks in, in The Cat in the Hat?

A bump marks the exact point where, as one scholar puts it, the book crosses from a factual, realistic world into make-believe.

Besides the striped hat, what does the Cat wear around his neck throughout The Cat in the Hat?

A bow tie is such a fixed part of the Cat that the sequel's first cover, which showed it in the wrong color, is noted as an error.

Which character narrates The Cat in the Hat in the first person, starting from a seat at the window?

The boy tells the whole story but is never named in the book, although his sister is.

In The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, the little cats hidden under the Cat's hat are named after what?

Letters of the alphabet name all 26 helpers, each smaller than the last, which lets the story double as an alphabet lesson.

Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat with a strictly limited vocabulary of how many different words?

236 words did the job; Dr. Seuss recalled being handed a list of 348 that every six-year-old should know and told to use even fewer.

Which magazine ran John Hersey's 1954 article on dull school readers that inspired The Cat in the Hat?

Life printed Hersey's complaint that school primers were bland, and his article named Dr. Seuss among the illustrators who could do better.

William Spaulding, who commissioned The Cat in the Hat, ran the school division of which Boston publisher?

Houghton Mifflin sold the school edition, which struggled at first, while the bookstore edition from Random House took off.

Which publishing chief brokered the deal that let two rival houses issue The Cat in the Hat?

Bennett Cerf, head of Random House, later bet Dr. Seuss $50 that he could not write a book using only 50 words, a wager that produced Green Eggs and Ham.

After The Cat in the Hat sold so well, Dr. Seuss co-founded which imprint, with the Cat as its mascot?

Beginner Books went on to publish Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop and Fox in Socks, with Dr. Seuss as president and editor.

Dr. Seuss said the Cat's gloves and sly smile came from Annie Williams, who did which job at a Boston publisher?

Elevator operator Annie Williams ran an old, shuddering lift at the firm's offices, and Dr. Seuss said he thought of her as he sketched the Cat.

Dr. Seuss said a story he pitched before The Cat in the Hat was about climbing which mountain?

Mount Everest was ruled out, by his account, because words such as scaling, peaks and degrees were missing from the approved list.

Before The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss won fame drawing ads for Flit, which kind of product?

Bug spray made his name: one scholar notes that until this book he was better known for the Flit campaign than for his nine children's books.

Scholar Philip Nel puts the Cat in the Hat beside the Wizard of Oz in which American tradition?

Con artists is Nel's label for a line of charming American tricksters, and he adds that Dr. Seuss identified with the Cat, once drawing himself as the character.

Dr. Seuss called the fish in The Cat in the Hat his version of which Puritan minister tied to Salem?

Cotton Mather advised the prosecutors at Salem, and critics have likewise read the fish as the story's nagging voice of conventional morality.

In The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, what unseen force under the tiniest cat's hat cleans up the mess?

Voom is never explained in the book, and it was the one word Dr. Seuss used that did not come from his list of words for early readers.

Which chore are the two children doing when the Cat turns up in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back?

Shoveling snow mirrors the first book in reverse: this time the weather keeps the children busy outdoors instead of bored inside.

What is the Cat eating in the bathtub when the children find him in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back?

Cake in the tub is how the trouble starts: when the water drains, it leaves the ring that the Cat then smears from one object to the next.

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back was the first Dr. Seuss children's book to picture which household device?

A television set is one of the things the stain gets wiped onto, a sign of how quickly TV was spreading through homes when the book came out.

Writer Anna Quindlen called the Cat in the Hat a pure example of which Freudian part of the mind?

The id, all impulse, is the Cat in this reading, with the scolding fish as the superego and the children caught between them as the ego.

A bronze Cat in the Hat stands beside a statue of Dr. Seuss in a garden in which Massachusetts city?

Springfield is where Dr. Seuss was born in 1904, and the sculpture garden honoring him there was designed by his stepdaughter.

In 2020, which city's public library named The Cat in the Hat its second most borrowed book ever?

New York librarians counted 469,650 checkouts over 125 years, a total beaten only by a 1962 picture book by Ezra Jack Keats.

A 1990s parody in the style of The Cat in the Hat, blocked in court, retold whose criminal trial?

O. J. Simpson's murder trial was retold in Seuss-style rhyme, and Dr. Seuss Enterprises won a court order that stopped the book's distribution.

After the 2003 film The Cat in the Hat, who barred any more live-action movies of Dr. Seuss books?

His widow, Audrey Geisel, acted after the film's hostile reviews, also halting a planned sequel based on The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.

Which comedian left the 2003 film The Cat in the Hat because a Christmas sequel clashed with filming?

Tim Allen left to shoot The Santa Clause 2; he had wanted to give the Cat an edge, having been scared of the character as a child.

Which actor played Larry Quinn, the scheming neighbor added for the 2003 film The Cat in the Hat?

Alec Baldwin's Larry poses as a successful salesman to woo the children's mother, while plotting to pack her son off to military school.

Which future Twilight actress played the well-behaved sister in the 2003 film The Cat in the Hat?

Dakota Fanning's character is the tidy, bossy one of the pair, opposite Spencer Breslin as her troublemaking older brother.

Which reality-TV socialite has a brief cameo as a club-goer in the 2003 film The Cat in the Hat?

Paris Hilton is credited simply as a club-goer, in a film whose Rotten Tomatoes consensus complains of double entendres and potty humor.

Which song parodist, known for a comic summer-camp hit, voiced the Cat in the Hat in a 1971 special?

Allan Sherman played the Cat again in Dr. Seuss on the Loose in 1973, and died soon after that special was finished.

Which Three Amigos star voiced the Cat in the PBS Kids series The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!?

Martin Short had been considered for the Cat in the 2003 film, then got to voice him in the science-minded cartoon seven years later.

Which Saturday Night Live alumnus voices the Cat in the animated Warner Bros. film The Cat in the Hat?

Bill Hader had already played the Cat once, in a 2014 Saturday Night Live sketch, a decade before he was cast in the animated film.

Which Orlando theme park opened in 1999 with a dark ride called The Cat in the Hat?

Islands of Adventure gave Dr. Seuss a whole land of his own, Seuss Landing, one of the park's six original islands.

In an Emmy-winning 1982 TV special, the Cat in the Hat tangles with which other Dr. Seuss character?

The Grinch torments the Cat after their cars collide, until the Cat leads a song reminding him of the love his mother gave him.

Which puppet studio produced The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, a 1996 series hosted by the Cat in the Hat?

The Jim Henson Company turned the Cat into a puppet host, a trickster in the first season and a gentler, more nurturing figure in the second.

Which Looney Tunes director produced the 1971 TV special The Cat in the Hat alongside Dr. Seuss himself?

Chuck Jones never worked on another Dr. Seuss project afterwards; the author had grown dissatisfied with his style on earlier specials.