The Cat in the Hat Comes Back The Whole Book Summary

No Time For Fun (1-20)

The narrator sadly has no time for play today, as there's plenty of work to be done.
His mother has told him and Sally that they're the somebodies responsible for making all that snow go away. Ugh, shoveling.
They're working hard like good little kids when they see someone walk by.

Uh-oh. It's the Cat in the Hat.
Yep, that guy. They've had problems with him before.
Ignore him, we say! And that's what they're going to try to do.
But alas, that doesn't work out too well.
The Cat in the Hat zips right into the house to get out of the snow, and the narrator has to chase him in.

Our narrator finds the Cat in the tub, eating a cake. Are we serious here?! (Yes, we are.)
He scolds the Cat, who just says that he likes to do this kind of thing. Um, that's a terrible excuse.
So it's no wonder the narrator gets mad. Or should we say furious?
He tells the cat off, saying that there's work to be done and that he wants him out of the house already. You tell him, Narrator.
When they turn off the water, though, there's a huge problem.
There's a big pink ring in the tub. Oops.

The Cat in the Hat proceeds to try to make things better by, well, making them worse.
He uses their mother's dress to wipe the ring off the tub, but not surprisingly, that just makes the dress a mess.
This is not going well. The narrator and Sally don't know if they should work on the snow or clean up the mess.
Next, the Cat in the Hat takes the spot off the dress by hitting it against a wall. Okay…
Of course, now the wall's a mess.
And the shenanigans continue.
He gets the spot of the wall with dad's $10 shoes.
He gets the spots of the shoes with the rug down the hall.
He gets the spots off the rug with the bed. (Yes, the bed.)
And then… the Cat in the Hat stops.
He says that he cannot take the spots of the bed.
Now what?

The good news is that the Cat in the Hat has backup. The bad news is that it comes in the form of more cats in hats.
From his hat, he pulls Little Cat A. And from Little Cat A's hat comes a smaller Little Cat B. And from that hat, we get Little Cat C.
They hunker down and get to work, cleaning up the spots with different objects around the house.
And wouldn't you know it—they finally get all those pesky spots out of the house.
Oh, but now they're all on the snow. How in the world do you deal with spotted snow?

The solution? More cats out of more hats. All the way down to Little Cat G—who's pretty tiny, by the way.
All the cats run out of the house and start shooting at the spots with pop guns. Um, what's that going to do?
The narrator has the same question, because all they're doing is making more spots.
Hmmm.
The solution? Of course: more cats.
Little Cat G takes off his hat, and out pops Little Cat H. They're followed by the rest of the alphabet all the way up to V.
They try again and try again, going at all those pink spots in the snow.
But nothing really works, and at the end of the day, all the spots are so spread out that it's now just one big spot all over the yard.

We bet you saw this coming: they call on Cats W, X, Y, and Z.
Little Cat Z is way too small to see, but he's the one who's apparently going to fix the spot for good.
He takes care of the situation with something under his hat called the Voom.
The Voom goes off and—voilà—cleans up all the snow.
Finally.

The Voom blows away all the snow, completes all the work for the two kids, and even blows all those little cats back into their original hat.
And with that, the Cat in the Hat walks away.
He tells the two dumbfounded kids that if they ever need help getting out some spots, he'll be here to help along with his gaggle of cats.
Um, no thank you.