The cats live in a Parisian mansion owned by Madame Adelaide Bonfamille (voice of Hermione Baddeley). The cats try to become sophisticated aristocrats like their owner, so they study painting, piano, and singing. Madame Adelaide Bonfamille's butler Edgar (voice of Roddy Maude-Roxey) thinks he will inherit when the old woman dies, but then he comes to believe that she has left everything to her cats, so he abducts the cats and takes them far away where they can never be able to return.