The Cat in the Hat he has made. But the Cat soon returns, riding a machine that picks everything up and cleans the house, delighting the fish and the children. The Cat then leaves just before their mother arrives, and the fish and the children are back where they started at the beginning of the story. As she steps in, the mother asks the children what they did while she was out, but the children are hesitant and do not answer. The story ends with the question, "What would "you" do if your mother asked "you"?" Theodor Geisel, writing as Dr. Seuss, created "The Cat
The Cat in the Hat portrays the fish as a kind of ever-nagging superego, the embodiment of utterly conventionalized morality." Philip Nel notes that other critics have also compared the fish to the superego. Anna Quindlen called the Cat "pure id" and marked the children, as mediators between the Cat and the fish, as the ego. Mensch and Freeman, however, argue that the Cat shows elements of both id and ego. In her analysis of the fish, MacDonald asserts that it represents the voice of the children's absent mother. Its conflict with the Cat, not only over the Cat's uninvited presence but also their inherent