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How does Pitty Sing (the cat) influence the plot of "A Good Man Is Hard To Find"?
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Pitty Sing, the cat in "A Good Man is Hard to Find," significantly influences the plot by causing the car accident that leaves the family vulnerable to The Misfit. The Grandmother hides the cat in the car, leading to the crash when Pitty Sing jumps onto Bailey's shoulder. This accident is crucial for the Grandmother's forced encounter with The Misfit, which reveals her spiritual shortcomings and advances the story's themes of redemption and moral awakening.
Pitty Sing's mishap provides the last comic note in the story before events turn dark and macabre. The Grandmother, not a respected person in the family, knows her son, Bailey, won't allow a cat to stay with them in the motel room. Therefore, as they head out on vacation, she hides Pitty Sing (which sounds like "pity sings") in a basket under her big black valise. In what will turn out to be a highly ironic train of thought, the Grandmother rationalizes:
She didn’t intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of her gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself.
We don't hear about the cat again until The Grandmother manipulates Bailey into turning down a deserted dirt road in search of an old plantation. She become deeply...
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embarrassed as she suddenly remembers the plantation is in Tennessee, not Georgia, the state they happen to be in. Because of her embarrassment, her "feet jumped up," upsetting the valise and freeing Pitty Sing to leap from the basket onto Bailey's shoulder. He is so startled he flips the car over into a ditch. We learn that:
Bailey remained in the driver’s seat with the cat gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.
Once the car flips, that's the end for the family, because The Grandmother foolishly identifies The Misfit.
Had the Grandmother not been so worried, ironically, about her cat asphyxiating himself, she and her entire family might not have been murdered.
The cat in O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" causes the accident that leaves the family stranded in the vicinity of The Misfit and his partners in crime.
In this O'Connor story, the grandmother must come into contact with The Misfit. The spiritually fallen woman must interact with the twisted, grotesque force that shows her the error of her ways, so to speak. The cat enables O'Connor to steer the grandmother toward the meeting. This leads to the woman understanding, perhaps and at least in part, the truth of her beliefs and behaviors. It also allows The Misfit to reveal the truth that he speaks of when he declares that she would have been a good woman if someone had held a shotgun to her head everyday of her life.
O'Connor believed that this was the only means of salvation for spiritually hardened or lackadaisical Christians.
Incidentally, the cat's presence in the car reveals characterization of the grandmother as well as adding to the plot: it provides still another example of her disrespect for others and her haughty nature.