The Cat in the Hat use of the term "cat" to refer to jazz musicians. According to Nel, "Even as [Geisel] wrote books designed to challenge prejudice, he never fully shed the cultural assumptions he grew up with, and was likely unaware of the ways in which his visual imagination replicated the racial ideologies he consciously sought to reject." Geisel once called the fish "my version of Cotton Mather", the Puritan moralist who advised the prosecutors during the Salem witch trials. Betty Mensch and Alan Freeman support this view, writing, "Drawing on old Christian symbolism (the fish was an ancient sign of Christianity) Dr. Seuss
The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat died a few months before this special had aired. Boris Karloff, the original voice of the Grinch, had died in 1969), while Mason Adams took over voicing the Cat in the Hat from the late Allan Sherman, who died in 1973. Since Friz Freleng was absent from production on "The Pink Panther" special "" due to his departure from DePatie–Freleng Enterprises to return to Warner Bros. Animation, this was the only other fully animated DFE production to be made by Marvel Productions and one of the last DFE cartoons Freleng was involved in. The special was first released on VHS