The Basics

At first glance, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back may seem to be about an abundance of silliness and messiness. And it totally is. We mean, come on, a cat just appears out of nowhere, starts multiplying himself, and makes a huge mess all over the house. It's a total circus.

But, of course, there's more too it than that. The focus here is that horrible out-of-control feeling you get when there's a huge mess—literal or figurative—and you just don't know how to contain it. Mini stress becomes whopper stress, and things totally spiral out of control.

Cat to the rescue!

The Cat's go-to solution (after trying some not-so-successful other ideas) is help. That's right. All it takes is a little help from his friends, and everything seems a bit more manageable. And no matter how small, each helper counts. After all, at the end of the day, it's microscopic Z who manages to fix everything up just right. They can't even see him, but that doesn't mean he's inconsequential. As far as impact goes, he's larger than life.

Not a fan of that moral? How about this one: never give up. The narrator seems ready to throw in the towel—or at least to kick the Cat in the Hat out—throughout the whole story. He doesn't want to deal with the Cat, and he'd rather just face the horrible spot than figure out another solution. But the Cat in the Hat isn't a giver-upper, that's for sure, and—wouldn't you know it?—it pays off.