The Amazing Maurice and the Educated Rodents

The Amazing Maurice is a talking cat who leads his 'Educated Rodents', a group of talking rats, as they go from town to town posing as a plague so that their accomplice, a boy piper named Keith, can lure them all away from the town, after which they share the money the piper receives. The rats had gained intelligence from eating the waste from the rubbish tip behind Unseen University; Maurice gained it after eating one of the rats, before he was capable of realizing that they were no longer normal rats.