Synopsis: “A dark comedy with universal appeal, The Cat is the Animal Farm of the post-communist 1990s,” says the American dust-jacket blurb. The Cat, the Rat, and the Mouse are three animals living in harmony in (or within) Chez Maupassant, a comfortable British suburban home of the “post-Thatcherite” 1990s. When the Professor dies of overeating and his widow moves out, the animals are abandoned to fend each for himself. The Cat tries to become the leader of the neighborhood animals in an upper-class Capitalistic manner, while the Rat tries to appeal to their sense of “animal solidarity” like a Labour leader, and the intellectual Mouse dithers ineffectually.