On a stormy day, Conrad (Chase Chavarria) and Sally (Andrea Bowen) are confined inside their house while their mother is gone.

The Cat in the Hat (Chris Edgerly) arrives to bring them cheer, but their next-door neighbor, Larry Quinn (Fred Tatasciore), steals the Crab Lock which seals the Cat's magical crate, causing magic to flood the house and unleash chaos that threatens the world.

The plot of the Game Boy Advance version is largely the same, with the exception that Conrad removes the lock, as Larry Quinn is not present.

However, when the player starts a new game, they will only have access to the Living Room, as Conrad and Sally will prevent the Cat from going upstairs and into the Kitchen and Garage.

In addition to the magic, there are slices of cake that restore the Cat's health and clapperboards which unlock clips from the movie for viewing in the menu when collected.

The bonus stages are inaccessible in the PC version due to the hardware limitations of the computers at the time the game was released.

After the Cat damages the pipe enough times, he will obtain a portion of the Crab Lock needed to seal his crate.

In the Xbox and PS2 versions of the game, the Cat must hit the piece of the Crab Lock with explosive goo to obtain it.

[9][13][8][12] GameZone gave the Windows version an overall score of 8/10, praising the gameplay as fun and easy, the graphics as "bright and vivid", and the soundtrack as "catchy", saying the presentation "captures the essence of Seuss" better than the movie.

[14] PC Gamer UK gave it a 9%, calling it "steaming effluent" and the worst platform game they played.

They criticized the Cat's performance as "annoying", cited bugs they experienced with the game such as collision issues, complained of poor level design, and called the graphics "drab" and outdated.