The book is about the Amazing Maurice, a group of talking rats, and the human boy Keith travelling in a mail coach to a small town called Bad Blintz.

The Amazing Maurice is a talking cat that leads his Educated rodents (a group of talking rats) as they leave town being a “plague”. Their gang parter named Keith pretends to be a rat chaser and has to “lure them all away” from the town in return of money. After Keith makes the money, they all share it and either waste it or save it. The rats had gained intelligence from eating leftovers of a spell behind Unseen University (a wizard school). Maurice gained it after eating one of the rats, before he was capable of realizing that they were no longer proper rats.

The group is not completely happy. The leader of the rats, Hamnpork, despises Maurice while Dangerous Beans (a near-blind rat who guides them) wants to start a rat civilization and both he and Peaches (the group’s scribe) find them unethical. The rats seek an ideal world where humans and rats can live together. They agree to do one last job in the town of Bad Blintz.

                                                                                                                     Sofia, 7. r