Master Abraham Liskov, a magician and miracle-worker at the court of a pocket principality, during a fantastical celebration staged by him saves a kitten from drowning. Murr learns to understand the language of the two-legged kind, masters literacy, and devours scraps of knowledge from the maestro’s old folios—so that at last he can enter Johannes Kreisler’s service.
Treating the human mind as the ability to perform deliberate actions, the most gifted of cats—armed with pen and ink—sets his biography and views on the world onto paper, using as blotting paper pages from the life of a rebellious musician.