The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents characters

Appears from the start

A ginger tom cat who woke up able to think and talk after scavenging on the magical rubbish tip behind Unseen University. Vain, greedy, and endlessly persuasive, he is the organizer of the plague-of-rats confidence trick and takes the largest share of the money on the grounds that the idea was his. He talks his way through every difficulty and insists the arrangement is fair to everyone involved, though a private unease about how his own thinking began has started to trouble him.

Also known as the stupid-looking kid

Appears from the start

A quiet orphan boy raised by the Guild of Musicians, who plays the pipe well enough to make the trick work and is content to let Maurice do the arguing. He notices more than he says, is genuinely fond of the rats, and has no ambition beyond music and being left in peace.

Appears from the start

A small, pale, almost blind rat who is the Clan's thinker and its conscience. Physically frail and no use in a fight, he is nonetheless the one the others listen to, because he asks what rats ought to be rather than what they have always been. He carries a battered children's picture book about animals living peaceably in clothes and houses, and treats the world it shows as something worth trying to build.

Appears from the start

A young female rat who acts as Dangerous Beans's helper and scribe, keeping notes and reading the words the Clan finds on labels and signs. Practical and sharp-tongued where he is dreamy, she pushes the Clan to act rather than only to talk.

Appears from the start

The ageing leader of the Clan, who came to intelligence late and does not much like it. He rules by seniority and strength, mistrusts the new talk of ideas and futures, and finds his authority slipping as younger, cleverer rats take on the work that keeps the Clan alive.

Appears from the start

The rat who leads the trap disarmers, the most dangerous job in the Clan. Methodical, cool-headed, and expert with springs, wires, and poisons, he plans every operation in advance and is respected by rats who do not much care for thinking in general.

Appears from the start

A showy young rat who wears a small straw hat, taps out dance routines, and believes that entertaining humans is safer than frightening them. He scouts ahead for the Clan and is braver than his patter suggests.

First appears in chapter 3

The daughter of the mayor of Bad Blintz, related to a famous pair of storytelling sisters and convinced that life runs on the rules of stories. She narrates her own actions, expects villains to behave like villains and orphans to come into fortunes, and is bold, bossy, and often right for entirely the wrong reasons.

First appears in chapter 4

The mayor of Bad Blintz, a worn, decent man trying to hold a hungry town together while its food runs short and its council loses patience with him. He believes what his rat-catchers tell him because he has no reason not to.

First appears in chapter 4

The two men paid to keep Bad Blintz free of vermin, who parade bundles of tails as proof of their work and are treated as local heroes for it. They keep their shed and their trade to themselves, and they take a close and unfriendly interest in the strangers who have just arrived in town.

First appears in chapter 7

A small skeletal rat in a black robe, carrying a scythe, who arrives for rats at the end of their lives. Matter-of-fact rather than cruel, it is simply the shape death takes for rodents, and it can be reasoned with by anyone with something to bargain.

Also known as Spider

First appears in chapter 8

A rat king: eight rats bound together by their tangled tails so that they cannot be separated, made deliberately rather than by accident. Unable to move well, it has grown enormous mental strength instead, and can push its way into the minds of rats, cats, and people to make them do as it wishes. It wants obedience, and regards ordinary thinking creatures as material.