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) and says she'll return at 3:30 sharp. While their mom is out at a job interview, they have no other choice but to wish they had something to do. The mysterious, quirky Cat in the Hat suddenly enters with a bump and fools around a bit. The family goldfish named "Karlos K. Krinklebine", demands that he must leave, but instead the Cat plays a game which he calls "Up, Up, Up, With a Fish", placing the fishbowl on top of a stack of bubbles. The children notice that the Cat is making the house a little untidy, and Conrad recalls