Vonnegut's power in Cat's Cradle comes from his ceremoniously detailed set-up of the plot along construction of so many different and unique characters that, when working together, make it very hard for the reader to remain detached and remember that what he is reading is firstly fictional and secondly nonsensical. It is as if the entire story is a game, but the reader is in fact one of the players, or in better words, the pawn: taken and directed throughout the interwoven story-lines of the book. Having played the string game of cats cradle, it seems to me as if the story actually echoes or mirrors the game in a way. In the game, one person may think that they are finally reaching the endpoint or goal of the pattern but a singular move can reverse the entire process back to where it was before. In this same way, the plotline of the story seems to continue to reverse and cycle back upon itself so that a conclusion is hard to be found. In this sense it was almost ironic that the ending was so final and drastic, as if Vonnegut was trying to laugh at me (as a reader) because of how much I struggled to comprehend the complexity and intricacy of the plot when, in the end, the ending was surprisingly obvious and the doom could never have been prevented, so therefore all of the thoughts were inherently inconsequential and pointless.
I definitely agree with your idea that Vonnegut throws the reader for a loop at many points during this book, but I think that he does it all with a purpose. It is hard for me to believe that Vonnegut would use plot complexity purely to make the reader feel that they should have seen things that they happened to miss. As a writer, I think that Vonnegut is trying to help readers become more critical, and this is why the book is challenging and intricate, but in the end he wants them to grow from the experience. He doesn't want to laugh at them.
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