The classmates reconvened, after their separate adventures in space and the faerealms, at Poppy Way.
They make their way to the Meow Maid Cafe*,* a cat-maid cafe whose cats have all gone missing!
There Sapphire meets her friend Cindy, who tells them their cats suddenly ran away and left the cafe in the middle of the night!
Cindy's Mom, however, believes they were somehow kidnapped and lured away by the dog-butler-bar across the street, Bark Butler Bar, owned by her ex-husband. But when they go across the street to talk to her ex-husband: they find that all his dog-butlers have disappeared too!
Using Ashlette's DNA tracker, with samples of hair from the disappeared cats and dogs, the party tracks the missing pets into the sewers and the network of underground smuggling tunnels beneath Poppy Way. There they're able to find one of the missing kittens and rescue it from a pursuing dog! With Ashlette's cat-translator, they're able to talk to the kitten and learn that the cat & dogs are in a turf war for which animal species will have control over Poppy's Way! UNDERGROUND DEATH MATCH WHOEVER LEAVES THE SEWERS FIRST MUST LEAVE POPPY'S WAY FOREVER!!!
The classmates manage to convince Kitten to lead them to their HQ, but when they're arrived they're ambushed by the dogs!
The final battle between cats and dogs is about to erupt...but right before it does Jammer steps in to try to convince them to join forces because cats & dogs being friends are more cute than cats & dogs fighting and if they're friends they're get more treats from humans...but the cats and dogs don't understand these economic principles of collaboration for long-term financial gain and THE FIGHT BEGINS — or it is about to if Jammer didn't use her superspeed to distract them, like a laser-pointer, with them chasing her out of the sewers and back up onto the street! There Sapphire makes a similar but more emotional speech, appealing to Ms. Maid Cat Cafe and Mr. Dog Butler Bar to reunite in a lover-to-enemies-to-lovers situation...which is successful! They make out in the middle of the street, their cats and dogs playing with each other, just as the influencer Jester arrives and the moment goes viral!!!
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After having a nice, late, celebratory lunch at the Cat Maid Cafe: the classmates continue in search of the last missing cats, who's actually one cat, who has been disguising themselves to be adopted by a different rich family every week and then robbing that family!
They go to Arcadia Towers, the highrise apartment building where the cat disappeared from last night (which the pattern indicates is where they'll rob tonight), and are let into the penthouse by the boy who lost his cat, who he knows as "Pinkie Pie". Ashlette's able to hack the apartment's security cameras and from reviewing/restoring the week of footage: they see the cat has been "casing the joint" for the week, specifically the safe in the boy's dad's office, and that it's been doing things no normal cat should be able to do, such as opening electronic locks with keycodes and hacking into computers. They decide to stake-out the dad's office and wait to catch the cat catburgler in-the-act, when he'll likely return tonight...
...but while they wait they have a pizza party! During which the boy, with the tactlessness of a child, asks Sunsword about the scar on his face. Sunsword reveals he got the scar from his abusive father and tells the boy to treasure the time he has with his (relatively speaking) good parents.
Night comes and, at around midnight, the cat catburgler sneaks into the apartment.
However, they immediately sense this is a trap (because Sunsword and Sapphire are terribly hidden) and escape!
A CHASE ENSUES involving elevator shafts, jumping off rooftops, and fights on the back of a space-bike...but eventually they capture the cat catburgler...who shapeshifts into a catboy! (Are they are boy who shapeshifts into a cat or a cat who shapeshifts into a boy?)
The cat catburgler explains they were robbing from the rich investors of the exploitative veteninary clinic PETCARE in order to fund independent animal shelters, but crime is still crime and the classmates hand him over to the authorities!
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The next morning, they return to class where Detective Squeaks Gerbriles congratulates them all for finding the missing cats and articulates the lesson of this assignment: cats, and cat lovers, are weird and dangerous creatures! NEVER TRUST THEM!
