Cat in the, uh, yarmulke.

A Manhattan couple has launched a home-publishing business - with a Yiddish translation of Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat."

The translation helps mark this year's 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Theodor Seuss Geisel, a k a Dr. Seuss.

Although only 113,000 New Yorkers speak Yiddish, the risk has paid off so far for Celeste Sollod and her husband, Zackary Sholem Berger.

Their company, Twenty-Fourth Street Books, has sold more than 3,000 copies of "Di Kats der Payats." Most of their customers know only a few Yiddish words and buy it as a novelty, said Berger, 30. About 20 percent of their customers speak Yiddish fluently, he estimated.

"It continually surprises us what kind of people buy the book," said Sollod, 35.

Independent bookstores in California, Massachusetts and Florida have been their biggest buyers.

Berger, who taught himself Yiddish in high school, did the translation. To make it rhyme, he had to fudge some of the lines. But he still considers it a literal translation.

The book's art is the same as the original English-language version from 1957. In fact, the main difference between the two is that the Yiddish one reads from back to front.

The book is sold at Manhattan's Bank Street Bookstore and West Side Judaica and may be purchased for $15 at www.yiddishcat.com.