It’s December in Molena Point, and while most of the quaint seaside village’s felines are dreaming of feathered play toys and stockings filled with catnip, five special cats—Joe Grey, Dulcie, Misto, Kit, and her true love, Pan—are plunged into a nightmarish mystery involving a series of strange events.

First, interior decorator Kate Osborne, the beguiling blond divorcee, reappears with a fortune and a strange story about how she got it. Then, there is the terrible car crash on the winding coastal road involving tortoiseshell Kit and her elderly housemates, Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw. The accident is terrifying enough, but then two mysterious men steal the Greenlaw’s car and the secret treasure they carefully hid inside its doors. And there is the old, faded photograph that appears to awaken long-buried memories for Misto, the yellow tomcat.

The fur starts to fly when one of the thieves ends up dead. To find the truth, Joe Grey mus