It is a few weeks before Christmas, and Alice has a new client, a lovely tortoiseshell cat named Roberta. But Roberta isn't always on her best behavior. Occasionally she turns into the kitty from hell, and one of Alice's tasks is to transport the fickle feline to her therapist. Dr. Wilma Tedescu, an Amazon-sized woman, is renowned for soothing many of Manhattan's savage beasties. Unfortunately, on Roberta's very first appointment Alice finds Dr. Tedescu as dead as a Christmas goose.

Dr. Tedescu was at her desk when someone put a bullet behind her ear, proving that cat 'shrinks' unlike cats, are decidedly short of nine lives. Almost immediately, suspicion falls on the doctor's hot-tempered estranged husband ... and then on Alice.

The fur flies as Alice sets out to find the real killer. Past experience leads Alice to look into records of the doctor's other clients: cats with multiple personalities, cats with gender confusion, and cats with litter-box phobias. But instinct tells her to investigate the doctor's own secret quirks and some neurotic human clients. Alice's nose for clues and her uncanny curiosity land her a whisker away from a killer who doesn't pussyfoot around with murder.