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 (TV special) house they visit has a pessimistic fish who "always tries to flatten the fun". Karlos becomes angry and accuses the Cat of not being a real cat, and his hat of not being a real hat. But the Cat indignantly asserts his legitimacy by singing his name in several languages. The tune becomes so catchy that everyone, even Karlos, joins in and contributes, telling the Cat that in Russian he is a "chapka in a shlyapa". (An interesting point to note is that in the Russian portion of the song, the Cat describes himself as a "chapka in a shlyapa",