Phenomenal Cat

[2] Band biographer Johnny Rogan thinks the song resembles a children's story or Victorian fairy tale,[3] comparable to the work of 19th-century English authors like Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll.

[4] Academic Patricia Gordon Sullivan considers the song a music hall composition, indicating Ray's continued interest in the genre.

[5] While Ray generally eschewed contemporary music trends in his songwriting,[6] retrospective commentators often describe "Phenomenal Cat" as an example of British psychedelia.

[7] Academic Barry J. Faulk thinks the song's psychedelia is driven by its Mellotron contribution – a tape-loop-based keyboard instrument that had been associated with the genre since its use on the Beatles' 1967 single "Strawberry Fields Forever".

In particular, Rogan thinks Ray may have been satirising his contemporaries, like Pete Townshend in his following of Indian spiritual master Meher Baba or the Beatles learning Transcendental Meditation from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

He considers it a "gentle, nuanced portrait of the temptations of capitalist materialism", contrasted against the more "spiritually and emotionally fulfilling possibilities" offered by the village green.

[36] In his September 1968 preview of Village Green for New Musical Express, critic Keith Altham wrote that "Phenomenal Cat" is an example of "one of those intriguing figments of Ray's meandering mind"; he concludes that the song includes a moral for those who read close enough, while other listeners can enjoy its "pleasant nursery rhyme".

[37] In an otherwise positive review of the album for The Village Voice,[38] critic Robert Christgau criticised the song for its "impersonal artiness", writing that it "might have been turned out by some Drury Lane whimsy specialist".

[39] In a retrospective assessment, Morgan Enos of Billboard stated that rather than follow the plot, the listener can appreciate Dave's "crooning" vocal and the "mellow, stony" Mellotron.