Geisel created the book in response to a debate in the United States about literacy in early childhood and the ineffectiveness of traditional primers such as those featuring Dick and Jane.

Geisel was asked to write a more entertaining primer by William Spaulding, whom he had met during World War II and who was then director of the education division at Houghton Mifflin.

The story begins as an unnamed boy who is the narrator of the book sits with his sister Sally while home alone on a cold and rainy day, staring wistfully out the window.

The Things cause more trouble, such as flying kites in the house, knocking pictures off the wall and picking up the children's mother's new polka-dotted dress.

In response, the boy catches the Things in a net and the Cat, apparently ashamed, stores them back in the big red box.

Theodor Geisel, writing as Dr. Seuss, created The Cat in the Hat partly in response to the May 24, 1954, Life magazine article by John Hersey titled "Why Do Students Bog Down on First R?

In bookstores anyone can buy brighter, livelier books featuring strange and wonderful animals and children who behave naturally, i.e., sometimes misbehave...

[3] After detailing many issues contributing to the dilemma connected with student reading levels, Hersey asked toward the end of the article: Why should [school primers] not have pictures that widen rather than narrow the associative richness the children give to the words they illustrate—drawings like those of the wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children's illustrators, Tenniel, Howard Pyle, "Dr. Seuss", Walt Disney?

[4]This article caught the attention of William Spaulding, who had met Geisel during the war and who was then the director of Houghton Mifflin's education division.

[8] Near the end of his life, Geisel told his biographers, Judith and Neil Morgan, that he conceived the beginnings of the story while he was with Spaulding, in an elevator in the Houghton Mifflin offices in Boston.

[8] In "My Hassle with the First Grade Language", he wrote about his proposal to a "distinguished schoolbook publisher" to write a book for young children about "scaling the peaks of Everest at 60 degrees below".

You can't..."[11] Geisel gave a similar account to Robert Cahn for an article in the July 6, 1957, edition of The Saturday Evening Post.

[16] Donald Pease notes that he worked on it primarily alone, unlike with previous books, which had been more collaborative efforts between Geisel and his wife, Helen.

[19] The first edition can be identified by the "200/200" mark in the top right corner of the front dust jacket flap, signifying the $2.00 selling price.

[21] The Morgans attribute these sales numbers to "playground word-of-mouth", asserting that children heard about the book from their friends and nagged their parents to buy it for them.

As Geisel noted in Jonathan Cott's 1983 profile of him, "Houghton Mifflin... had trouble selling it to the schools; there were a lot of Dick and Jane devotees, and my book was considered too fresh and irreverent.

[23] As of 2007, more than 10 million copies of The Cat in the Hat have been printed, and it has been translated into more than 12 different languages, including Latin, under the title Cattus Petasatus.

[26] She wrote, "Beginning readers and parents who have been helping them through the dreary activities of Dick and Jane and other primer characters are due for a happy surprise.

"[28] Polly Goodwin of the Chicago Sunday Tribune predicted that The Cat in the Hat would cause seven- and eight-year-olds to "look with distinct distaste on the drab adventures of standard primer characters".

[29] Both Helen E. Walker of Library Journal and Emily Maxwell of The New Yorker felt that the book would appeal to older children as well as to its target audience of first- and second-graders.

[32] Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association listed The Cat in the Hat as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children".

Yvonne Coppard, reviewing the fiftieth anniversary edition in Carousel magazine, wondered if the popularity of the Cat and his "delicious naughty behavior" will endure another fifty years.

[39][40] 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.

She points out that on the last page, while the children are hesitant to tell their mother about what happened in her absence, the fish gives a knowing look to the readers to assure them "that something did go on but that silence is the better part of valor in this case".

"[46] Donald Pease concurs, writing, "The Cat in the Hat is the classic in the archive of Dr. Seuss stories for which it serves as a cornerstone and a linchpin.

"[47] The publication and popularity of the book thrust Geisel into the center of the United States literacy debate, what Pease called "the most important academic controversy" of the Cold War era.

[49] Geisel wrote multiple books for the series, including The Cat in the Hat Comes Back (1958), Green Eggs and Ham (1960), Hop on Pop (1963), and Fox in Socks (1965).

"[53] In 2007, during the 110th Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared the impasse over a bill to reform immigration with the mess created by the Cat.

[54] He then carried forward his analogy hoping the impasse would be straightened out for "If you go back and read Dr. Seuss, the cat manages to clean up the mess.

[66] Spurred by the popularity of the live-action How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), Universal Pictures produced The Cat in the Hat (2003) starring Mike Myers in the titular role.