The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents recap

Maurice, a talking cat, runs a confidence trick with a clan of talking rats and a boy piper: the rats stage an infestation, the boy pipes them away, and the grateful town pays. All of them woke into thought after eating magical rubbish from Unseen University, and the rats have begun to want something better than a swindle. In the mountain town of Bad Blintz the trick collapses, because the town is starving and there are no rats in it at all. The Clan is caught in traps and cages; Keith and the mayor's daughter Malicia discover that the town's celebrated rat-catchers have been stealing the food themselves, faking the plague, and running rat fights in a cellar. Below them the rat-catchers have made something worse: a rat king of eight rats knotted together that can seize other minds and means to rule. The Clan, led by Darktan after Hamnpork is lost, fights back; Maurice destroys the rat king at the cost of two of his lives, one of which he trades to save Dangerous Beans. The rat-catchers are arrested, and the town and the rats settle on a treaty and a paid piper instead of a trick.

Maurice is a talking cat travelling with a clan of talking rats and a boy called Keith. All of them became able to think after eating rubbish from the magical waste tip behind Unseen University, and Maurice has turned this into a living: the rats infest a town noisily and expensively, Keith arrives as a piper, the town pays him to lead the vermin away, and everyone moves on. The rats have grown uncomfortable with it. Their frail, near-blind philosopher Dangerous Beans, helped by the note-taking Peaches, wants the Clan to stop stealing and hiding and to live openly alongside humans, an idea their ageing leader Hamnpork regards as nonsense. Maurice promises that the mountain town of Bad Blintz will be the last job. It goes wrong immediately. Bad Blintz says it is overrun with rats, but the Clan finds no rats at all: no colonies, no scent trails, no tunnels in use. The town is hungry, its food rationed and short, and traps and poison are laid everywhere in far greater quantities than any real infestation would need.

Keith is taken up by Malicia Grim, the mayor's daughter, who is certain that everything happening is a story and is determined to work out which one. Between them they learn that the town's two rat-catchers are its heroes, that the mayor's council is losing patience over the missing food, and that nobody has actually seen a live rat in some time. Underground, Darktan's trap-disarming squad works through a landscape of springs, wires, and poisoned bait, losing rats as it goes, while Dangerous Beans and Peaches press further in search of the missing rat population. What the Clan finds instead of rats is cages, and a smell of fear that even the boldest scouts will not go near. Maurice, who prefers problems he can talk his way out of, begins to realize that this one is not that kind.

Keith and Malicia break into the rat-catchers' shed and find the truth: cages of live rats, bundles of tails made up to look like proof of killings, and a cellar stacked with the food the town believes the rats have eaten. The rat-catchers have been stealing the supplies, inventing the plague that keeps them employed and admired, and running secret rat fights against dogs for money. Caught in the act, the two children are tied up and shut in the cellar. Above and below ground the Clan is coming apart: Hamnpork is taken by the rat-catchers, several rats are trapped or caged, and Dangerous Beans and Peaches have vanished into the deepest tunnels and not come back.

Darktan is caught in a trap himself and comes close to dying, meeting the small robed skeleton that collects rats at the end of their lives. He gets free, and returns to find the Clan leaderless and frightened; with Hamnpork gone he takes charge, organizing rescues and a proper defence for the first time. In the lowest cellars the reason for everything becomes clear. The rat-catchers have made a rat king: eight rats knotted permanently together by their tails, kept and fed and grown strong. It cannot move well, but it can reach into the minds of rats and cats and push them where it wants them, and it holds Dangerous Beans and Peaches. It takes hold of Maurice, who finds his own thoughts being used against him, and it has no intention of stopping at one town.

The rat-catchers stage their pit fight, with captured rats set against dogs for a paying crowd, and Hamnpork does not survive it. Keith and Malicia get free and go down after the others, and Darktan brings the Clan into the cellars in force, disarming traps and freeing cages as they go. Underground, the rat king works on the Clan's minds, offering rats the comfort of not having to think for themselves, and Dangerous Beans argues against it with nothing but the idea that thinking creatures choose what they are. Maurice, fighting the thing's grip on his own head, has to decide whether the selfish, plausible cat he has always been is enough to hold out against it.

Maurice breaks the rat king's hold and attacks it directly, destroying it and losing one of his nine lives in the process. Meeting Death straight afterwards, he bargains, and gives up a second life to bring back Dangerous Beans, who had been fatally injured. The rat-catchers are dragged out of their cellar with the stolen food as evidence and arrested, and the town learns that its plague was manufactured. What follows is not a trick but a negotiation: Keith speaks for the humans and Dangerous Beans and Darktan for the rats, and Bad Blintz agrees to a treaty setting aside food and space for the Clan, ending the poison and the traps, and putting the rats to work in the drains and tunnels, with Keith staying on as the town's paid piper to make the arrangement look respectable. Malicia writes it all down as a story. Maurice takes his money, decides that honesty on this scale is not for him, and is last seen far away, explaining a promising business idea to another likely-looking boy.

The rat-catchers are exposed as the real plague: they had been stealing and hoarding the town's food, faking infestations, and breeding rats for illegal fights, and they are arrested. The Rat King, which had been made from their captives and had been forcing rats, cats, and people to obey it, is destroyed when Maurice attacks it directly, an act that costs him one of his nine lives. Meeting Death immediately afterwards, Maurice bargains and gives up a second life to bring back Dangerous Beans, who had been fatally hurt in the confrontation. Hamnpork does not survive; Darktan leads the Clan afterwards. With Keith speaking for the humans and Dangerous Beans and Darktan for the rats, the town and the Clan negotiate a formal agreement instead of a trick: no more poison and traps, an agreed share of food and space, rats working in the town's tunnels and drains, and Keith installed as the town's paid piper so that the arrangement has an official face. Malicia writes the whole affair up as a story. Maurice, given his share of the money and a great deal of goodwill, finds it all far too respectable, and is last seen a long way off, sizing up another likely-looking boy and beginning to explain a business proposition.