Throughout the story, George, the protagonist’s husband, is painfully unaware of his wife’s needs. Although at the beginning of the story he offers to retrieve the cat, “‘I’ll do it,’ her husband offered from the bed,”[2] through the remainder of the story he acts contemptuously towards his wife. When the American wife tells George what she wishes for her life, he responds in an irritated way, telling her to go "'shut up and get something to read.'"[2] George’s actions in the story are contrasted to those of the innkeeper, who sends a cat to the American wife at the end of the story when she cannot find the “cat in the rain.” The American wife even comments that, “She like[s] the way [the innkeeper] wanted to serve her.”