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 Cat in the Hat the cat manages to clean up the mess." In 1999, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp featuring the Cat in the Hat. "The Cat in the Hat"s popularity also led to increased popularity and exposure for Geisel's previous children's books. For example, 1940's "Horton Hatches the Egg" had sold 5,801 copies in its opening year and 1,645 the following year. In 1958, the year after the publication of "The Cat in the Hat", 27,643 copies of "Horton" were sold, and by 1960 the book had sold a total of over 200,000 copies. "The Cat in the Hat" has