Online Journey

The Cat in the Hat made a return appearance in this 1958 sequel. On this occasion, instead of Thing One and Thing Two, he brings along Little Cat A, nested inside his hat. Little Cat A doffs his hat to reveal Little Cat B, who reveals C, and so on down to the microscopic Little Cat Z, who turns out to hold the key to the plot in his hat. The crisis involves a pink bathtub ring and other pink residue left by the Cat after he snacks on a cake in the bathtub with the water running. Preliminary attempts to clean it up fail as they only transfer the mess elsewhere, including a dress, the wall, a pair of ten dollar shoes, a rug, the bed, and then eventually outside. A "spot killing" war then takes place between the mess and Little Cats A through V, who use an arsenal of primitive weapons including pop guns, bats, and a lawnmower. Unfortunately, the initial battle to rid the mess only makes it into an entire yard-covering spot. Little Cats V, W, X, and Y then take off their hats to uncover microscopic Little Cat Z. Z takes his hat off and unleashes a "Voom" which cleans up the back yard and puts all of the other Little Cats back into the big Cat in the Hat's hat. The book ends in a burst of flamboyant versification, with the full list of little cats arranged into a metrically-perfect rhymed quatrain, designed to teach the reader the alphabet. Little Cats A, B and C were also characters in the 1996 TV series The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss (Little Cat N also made an appearance, but only once and some of the alphabetical cats appeared in Season 2 regularly as Little Cat Z began to be visible). The Cat in The Hat Comes Back was part of the Beginner Book Video series along with There's a Wocket in My Pocket! and Fox in Socks.