Cat in the Rain Summary & Analysis

By telling the reader that the Americans know no one at the hotel, the narrator highlights their otherness—they are strangers in a strange land. The landscape that the hotel room looks out on is beautiful. However, the narrator’s comments suggest that on the day the story is set, the weather is not in fact very nice, given that there are no artists painting in the garden. Furthermore, the presence of the war monument communicates to the reader that there has been a major conflict in this region.

The war monument calls the reader’s attention to the fact that the First World War (1914-1918) has recently passed through Europe. By referring to the Italian sightseers who come to visit the monument, the narrator locates the action of the story in Italy. Furthermore, the interest that the Italians take in the monument suggests just what a momentous event the war was for them. The image of the monument glistening brightly in the rain further highlights the monument as an important aspect of the landscape. 

The overcast, rainy weather gives a desolate aspect to the scene. The landscape—except for the lone waiter in the café doorway—is practically deserted. The stillness and bleakness of the scene implicitly recall the destruction and desolation wrought on this landscape by the war, which is referenced through the war monument.

As she looks out on the scene, the wife’s attention is on the cat—not the war monument. This is significant because it implicitly suggests that the wife is not very interested in the war. As an American, she is removed from the conflict, unlike the Italians who have experienced the war firsthand and who come from a long way off to visit the monument. Instead, it is a small animal that catches her attention. That the wife sympathizes with the cat in its predicament is also significant, because it suggests that she identifies with the animal’s vulnerability and loneliness.

The hotel-keeper’s courtesy to the wife is emblematic of old-world European hospitality. The emphasis that the narrator puts on the distance between the hotel-keeper, who stands at the far end of his office, and the wife as she passes by, however, suggests that although she likes him, a certain formality and remoteness characterizes the wife’s relationship to the hotel-keeper.

The American wife’s strong feelings of liking for the hotel-keeper are notable because there is a stark absence in the story of an expression of such feelings towards the American wife’s own husband, George. The narrator’s comment that the American wife likes the way the hotel-keeper is ready to serve her implicitly suggests that the American wife lacks such attention and consideration from her own husband.

The hotel-keeper’s consideration and attentiveness are dramatized here through his action of sending out the maid to follow the wife with an umbrella. While earlier in the story, the wife’s husband, George, had simply commanded his wife not to get wet, here the hotel-keeper acts to actually prevent the wife from exposure to the elements. Again, this sets up a contrast between the consideration and attentiveness of the hotel-keeper and George’s inattentiveness. 

The wife’s deep disappointment at not finding the cat suggests that she herself seeks something from the animal. Her disappointment contrasts with the maid’s reaction, who seems to find the American wife’s mission trivial and humorous. This perhaps suggests the gulf that exists between the Italian maid’s experience—presumably, like other Italians, she had lived through the deprivations of the First World War—and the experience of the American hotel guest, whose whimsical wants imply that she has lived a life far-removed from true deprivation. Furthermore, the difficulty in communication here, expressed through the wife’s lapsing into English, further reinforces the idea that a gulf in experience divides the two women.

The American wife’s feelings as she passes by the hotel-keeper’s office highlight the extent to which the cat’s loss has affected her. That she feels small points to her own feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness—feelings, perhaps, that she had projected onto the cat. Her contradictory emotion of self-importance points to the confusion and upheaval she experiences as a result of the loss of the cat. It’s also significant that the narrator begins to refer to her as a “girl” here. It’s as if, as she grows more insecure and uncertain, the narrative perspective on her changes, casting her as an immature, vulnerable youngster.

George’s prostrate position on the bed suggests the contrast between his attitude towards his wife and the hotel-keeper’s. While the hotel-keeper rises from his seat on each occasion he meets the wife, George remains stretched out. His own comfort and ease seem to take precedence over his wife’s. 

The wife’s preoccupation with wanting and losing the cat affirms the sense that there is something beyond the cat itself that she desires. That George returns to his reading as she speaks suggests that an alienation or distance pervades the relationship between husband and wife. George seems inattentive and unresponsive to his wife’s needs.

The wife’s action of examining herself in the mirror suggests that she is going through some process of self-reevaluation, one triggered by the loss of the cat. Her dissatisfaction with her short hair, and her desire to not look like a boy, also imply an ambivalence on her part towards her own femininity. She sports a short hairstyle that, considering the time in which the story is set, was a marker of a progressive and liberated feminine identity. And yet her hankering for long hair suggests that she desires a more conventional and traditional feminine identity. George’s response that he likes her hair the way it is is also telling, in that he seems to cast her appearance in terms of his own needs, rather than hers. What seems to matter to him is what he thinks of her hair, not what she thinks. 

The long list of desires that the wife shares with George indicates that a deep dissatisfaction pervades her life. Her desire for a cat with which she can have close physical contact specifically implies that she yearns for close and warm connection and contact. Such connection seems to be lacking in her relationship with George. His abrupt order to her to shut up and get something to read points to his own callousness, as well as his alienation from her needs. The wife’s desires are also suggestive of a hankering for a more conventional feminine identity. Long hair and silver, as well as a need to nurture, as expressed through her desire for the cat, are all associated with conventional femininity.

The wife’s return to the window, where she takes up the same posture she had held at the beginning of the story, reinforces her distance from George. Her husband has returned to his reading, and she has turned away from him towards the window—as though she is searching for possibilities for satisfaction from the outside world. Her repeated demands for a cat indicate that her feelings of dissatisfaction continue to consume her. George’s obliviousness to his wife’s words as he reads his book underscore his inability to address, or even recognize, her unhappiness.

The maid’s arrival with a cat—a gift from the hotel-keeper to the wife—ends the story on an ambiguous note. The reader is not given the wife’s reaction to this cat. Furthermore, it’s not certain that this is the same cat that the wife had spotted earlier from her hotel window, given that the wife referred to the cat she had seen as a “kitty,” and the cat that the maid brings up to the room is “large.” As such, the reader is left in doubt about whether the wife’s desire for a cat has been fulfilled or not. She has gotten a cat, but it’s quite likely that it is not the cat she had initially sought. The story’s ambiguous ending suggests to the reader the ways in which people’s desires, even when they are satisfied, can often be disappointing.