Maurice

The Amazing Maurice
Name	Maurice
Race	feline
Age	indeterminate
Occupation	scam artist
Physical appearance	that of a streetwise tomcat, ie barely any ears left and scars all over his nose
Residence	no fixed abode
Death	has an Arrangement with Death re number of lives left
Parents
Relatives
Children
Marital Status
Appearances
Books	The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
Cameos	Reaper Man

A cat who is good at doing what cats do, ie steering people. A miouw here, a purr there, a little gentle pressure with a claw...Add a human-level intelligence induced by eating somebody he shouldn't (Additives), whilst foraging in the Unreal Estate, and we have a master scam artist with a vastly expanded repertoire.

His human-level intelligence is similar to Gaspode's in that he has also gained the ability to speak human, and similarly uses it in order to influence a person (thinking his voice is their conscience) or a crowd (thinking it was another crowd-member talking).

The whole idea with the rat-piping was Maurice's brainchild... all it took was a clan of intelligent rats and a stupid-looking kid who could play the pipes a bit. With his intelligence he also develops other human-like attributes such as compassion but after a successful conclusion in Bad Blintz he opts to leave the area.

He is still allowed to catch rats, as long as they are Keekees: If a rat he has caught can't speak on request, he can eat it.

While the whole story of what awaited Maurice, the rats, and the stupid-looking kid in Überwald is told in The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, it is clear from anecdotal evidence presented in Reaper Man that they have previously tried the rat-piping scam in Ankh-Morpork.(1) Maybe this why they moved the operation to Überwald (ie, far from Ankh-Morpork's jurisdiction), as this is the sort of thing you only try once with Vetinari...especially as it seemed to work, and Vetinari was scammed out of a reported $1,000 in gold dollars.

Maurice was last mentioned in The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day bonus pamphlet as having been arrested, creating a vacancy for the post of Regional Rodent Security Consultant in Überwald.

It is also mentioned in a note in The Shepherd's Crown that there was to be another book featuring Maurice as a ship's cat.

(1) (Corgi PB, p98, p218)

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