The Mad Catter
- CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR...Books One, Two, and Three
As a writer, an author if you may
I like the words and phrases, repartee
And while I would never claim to be a poet
I especially love the rhymes, and now you know it!
Don’t worry, I won’t inflict an entirely rhyming piece on you. Not only is it more than slightly annoying, it’s hard work! So many times while writing rhyming dialogue I began with “This is so much fun!” but half-way through a long conversation I’d be like “Please, kill me”.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve used rhyming characters sparingly, even though I really do enjoy the challenge of crafting stanzas. But I could hardly avoid it with the Mad Catter, since rhyming is a key trait he inherited from one of his components. With him, of course, I took it one one step further.
He is so obsessive that he forces his subordinates to rhyme.
Near him, to not end with a correspondence of sound is a crime.
Mad Chatter
City of Sweet Sorrow has a lot of horror elements intertwined with sweetness, both figurative and literal. The titular city is a slave mine, but they’re mining sugar for candy. So I wanted its ruler to be equally whimsically/wicked.
If this character was a mathematical equation it would look something like:
Mad Hatter + (Cat in the Hat – being a cat) x (Willy Wonka + The Joker) = Mad Catter
If it’s never been obvious before, the feline part of his second name has come from that Cat in the Hat, along with that tendency to rhyme. His need for everyone else to rhyme is a nod to the Seussiverse in general. All Dr Seuss creations speak in rhyme and I figured that convention had to come from somewhere, so I planted it within Mr Catter.
Achieve Grape-ness!
The preponderance of purple in the Catter’s attire and surroundings is the effect of adding Willy Wonka to the Joker. As an aside to that, I adore the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film, and I’m a big Bat-fan. However, until I created the Catter I never realised that Wonka and Joker are both typically depicted in purple. It’s why the Mad Hatter is obsessed with purple but it’s a huge coincidence, don’t you think? It’s almost as though they were inspired from the same source…
Also, there’s no rhyme for “purple” in English, which makes the fact that he’s dripping in that colour deliciously ironic.
And if you guessed that I would end this piece with another rhyme then well done—you understand my love of things canonic.
Bonus Round
The moment where the Catter forces Lucy and Amber to tag-team rhyme is one of my favourite moments in the book. Amber’s quick uptake and deftness in rhyming contrasts beautifully with Lucy’s lack of comprehension and her word choice, which manages to be both dull and yet difficult when she sets Amber the task of finding a rhyme for “famine”. Sure, Amber makes it look easy but try doing that while you’re being held prisoner by a purple-clad lunatic child-slaver!
