Hate That Cat

In Love That Dog, which is the prequel to Hate That Cat, Jack’s teacher, Miss Stretchberry, introduces him to poetry. At first, he asks her not to share his poems with the class. Jack’s tone in his poems is recalcitrant, even resentful at times, especially when Miss Stretchberry asks him to explain his ideas. When she shares William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow” with the class, Jack responds with his own similar poem, claiming that a great deal depends on a blue car that is “splattered with mud / speeding down the road” (Creech, Sharon. Love That Dog, HarperCollins, p. 10). When Miss Stretchberry asks him to explain why so much depends upon that car, Jack doesn’t want to write about it or explain its importance. However, he repeatedly brings up the blue car in subsequent poems, eventually giving Miss Stretchberry permission to share his work anonymously with the class. Though Jack resists her instruction to write about a pet, insisting that he doesn’t have one, he reveals that he did have a yellow dog named Sky. He lets Miss Stretchberry share his poem about choosing Sky at the animal shelter, even suggesting a title and paper color, which indicates his growing appreciation of poetry and how he can use it as an authentic form of self-expression. While this transition takes place, Jack’s tone in his poems shifts from anger to uncertainty, until he finally settles into a self-possessed tone. One of his later poems titled “My Sky” tells the story of how the mud-spattered blue car sped down his street and hit Sky, killing the dog.

In Hate That Cat, Jack is still wrestling with his grief about losing Sky, finding it easier to write about a cat he hates than a dog he loved and lost. His self-confidence grows to the point where he can stand up to his pedantic Uncle Bill, defending Williams’s short poems about everyday objects and rejecting the professor’s rigid and limiting definition of poetry. Jack begins to focus on his deaf mother and the way in which she processes words and sounds, using poetry as a means to explore and understand her experience of the world as well as his own grief, fear, and love. In Hate That Cat, Jack continues to write poetry to deal with his difficult feelings, but he also uses it to understand the experiences of people other than himself.

He began to gain confidence as a writer in Love That Dog, eventually giving Miss Stretchberry permission to share his work and identity with the class. His confidence develops further in Hate That Cat. He learns about ways to enrich a poem and begins to convey feelings and ideas that initially seem indescribable. Writing poetry empowers Jack to trust himself, to express himself authentically, and to work toward a more complete understanding of his own experiences. In Love That Dog, he questions the nature of poetry and wonders what makes a poem a poem, speculating that some poets just meant to “mak[e] a picture / with words” (Love That Dog, p. 26); in Hate That Cat, Jack’s understanding of poetry grows. He realizes the depth and importance of those word pictures and understands how communication and artistry can overlap. Jack’s understanding of The Emotional Power of Poetry begins to develop in Love That Dog and continues in new and significant ways in Hate That Cat, even allowing him to reassess his hatred of cats and welcome a new pet into his home and heart.