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Who is the cat? Is a question i hope you all are asking...

, the specific cat i am talking about is THE CAT….

The cat From the Cat and that Hat

Now that we all know what Cat we are speaking of

We can start talking about who he is.

First off, the cat is a fictional character

That was thought of and developed by the wonderfully imaginative

Theodor seuss geisel

The cat and the hat is an interesting case of a character

Due to the lack of material involving him especially true canon

We must now use all types of current media to piece together

What used to be the illustrious Cat

We also must come to an understanding that

He is up for interpretation and each is to their own

I have chosen to interpret the Cat for the sake of convenience

by grouping his motives, actions as well as his reactions into

Three main groups: Trickster, Antagonist and imaginative

The cat in my personal interpretation is a flat character

Meaning that The cat himself doesn't truly have depth,

no matter how the author may wish to make it appear that way

There is only two main reasons that i can explain for my decision and that is that throughout the story he has had no character development and secondly that he does not change over the course of his story, which we will go over again later in the presentation.

I personally believe that the Cat is a static character.

My reasoning for that lays in how he portrays himself

or how his characteristics are made apparent.

Firstly The cats motives are to purly have fun

Even if said fun is a little mischievous at times

The cat has no internal conflict that is made apparent throughout the book, as he is too oblivious to his mistakes and actions until it's too late, which means really that they are just mistakes or him being ignorant.

The Cat does have success in the book, but that is up to the reader,

but for me him making the children's day interesting  accomplishes his goal

His only real failure is his inability to tell when he needs to stop, which leads to him destroying the children's house, which him to having his only epiphany which is that everything is only good in moderation wich in this case means fun. And in retrospective there is no reaffirming conclusion in the book that the cat has fixed his ways and has learned said lesson.

I believe that the Cat is a stereotypical character. My reasoning for said accusation is as follows he is a funny character which is the disney term that they use to label their characters that are animals but act and behave like humans. He also is comic relief which is generally the purpose of said funny characters. Hes clumsy which is one of his main characteristics as well as the impetus behind the climax of the book. No real character depth, he has no true human like characteristics that make him stand out from other characters serving the same purpose.

The Cat also fits into a category that falls under a label the pixar loves to use and that is cloud nine characters, one of the most well known cloud nine characters is luna lovegood from harry potter as she appears to be crazy to both the other characters in the book as well as the mainstream audience, as well as offering key advice or an answer that normally wouldn't have been found much like the cat does.

Antagonist is one of the labels that i choose to put some of the characteristics and actions of the Cat.As he almost destroys the children's house, which can easily be seen as counterproductive to the children's lives and goals and same goes with almost getting the children in trouble. What really sticks these actions under antagonist is that their is no apparent remorse that he is sorry for his actions, it seems to me that he is more sad that he was told to leave then he is that the house got destroyed.

The second label that i am going to put The cat under is the trickster category I put him under trickster rather than malicious or dubious because there is no reason or evidence that he does anything just for the sake of being mean, meaning that he truly does not have malicious intent. I also would label him as a trickster because he just wants to have fun and sometimes for the cat having fun can land people in trouble and final reason why he's under trickster is because he helps to clean up his mess, if he was mean or cruel he would have left it as such but because he was just trying to have fun he sticks around and cleans up.

The final category i am putting the Cat under is imaginative, now this is more of a theory that i have about the character but it explains so much about his rhyme and reason that i had to put it in here to share with yall,

My theory goes that the cat is actually just a figment of the children's imagination, and some early evidence about that is that he has tendencies that you can see fit for a small child, just like the type of child that sally and the boy are like, also The cat creates his own imaginary friends called thing one and thing two, Now the reason why i thought that the cat could be an imaginative character of sally and the boy is because children often create imaginary friends that are opposite completing themselves or if alienated create imaginary friends that are like themselves to soothe their anxiety of not fitting in with other kids. Other than his apparent childlike actions and responses he has no ill intent much like children don't purposely do wrong, just to do wrong. He accidentally creates a huge mess much like kids do, and then because it's the children's imagination he also cleans up all that mess with inhuman speed. Another thing to think about that adds to the theory is that he magically appears when the boy and sally are bored which indicates that their imagination may have kicked on hence why he appears, wich also make sense as when their mother returns home the cat leaves, and leaves just a trace of himself in their mind.

Which leads me to the conclusion that appeases me. That The Cat is a special character, one that many people want to believe is so much more than he really is, one that people want to read way too much into when it just may be that the Cat is actually a better representative of who the children are as a person, rather than the cat being sentient at all. But that is not to say that the cat is not a good character just because he himself is flat and static does not mean that what he may or may not represent  is also as uninteresting as he is.