The other day I got this idea, what if The Catcher in the Rye was actually refering to a cat hidden in the fabric of the novel, like it's hidden in the title. Hidden so well in fact, that nobody had any incling about it until this very moment? Of course,we recall very little from the said novel, but we seem to remember there were some speculations going on about where the ducks go during the winter, when the lake in the park freezes to ice. Now, this info would be totally useless to a human but very valuable indeed to a cat. So maybe this is a marker suggesting to the alert reader an implied cat, an infered cat, a cat that refrains fro appearing in any other way than by escaping the plot, i. e., by not appearing at all. Now, why would Salinger bother to imply a cat in a story about a juvenile rambler in the streets of New York? The answer is given with the asking, it would seem: Holden Caulfild is our strayed cat who can't find his way home because that home of his is not genuinly supportive. That is why he's constantly on the lookout for an opening, giving his old girlfriends a buzz, visiting a grown-up friend of the family, sneaking unseen into his own hoose to chat with his little sis, and so on.
