 Geisel gave varying accounts of how he conceived of The Cat in the Hat . According to the story Geisel told most often , he was so frustrated with the word list that William Spaulding had given him that he finally decided to scan the list and create a story out of the first two words he found that rhymed . The words he found were cat and hat . Near the end of his life , Geisel told his biographers , Judith and Neil Morgan , that he conceived the beginnings of the story while he was with Spaulding , in an elevator in the Hougton Mifflin offices in Boston . It was an old , shuddering elevator and was operated by a " small , stooped woman wearing ' a leather half @-@ glove and a secret smile ' " . Anita Silvey , recounting a similar story , described the woman as " a very elegant , very petite African @-@ American woman named Annie Williams " . Geisel told Silvey that , when he sketched the Cat in the Hat , he thought of Williams and gave the character Williams ' white gloves and " sly , even foxy smile " . 
