SOURCE: "Cats, Crime, and Punishment: The Mikado's Pitti-Sing in 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'," in English Studies in Canada, Vol. XIV, No. 4, December, 1988, pp. 436-50.

In the following essay, Dyson explores the links between The Mikado and "A Good Man Is Hard to Find, " maintaining that "both works explore thematically the significance of the mysteriously arbitrary design by which characters and situations are moved despite themselves."

If the grandmother is, as she appears to be, the "good man" who is so hard to find in Flannery O'Connor's story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," then who or what, one wonders, is Pitty Sing, the grandmother's cat? Her namesake is of course one of the "Three Little Maids from School" who come tripping on-stage early in Act 1 of Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Mikado. The connection between Pitti-Sing and Pitty Sing might not appear to be...