51 pages • 1-hour read
The Great Pet Heist
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Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
The morning after devising his heist plan, Oscar assigns roles for the reconnaissance mission: Butterbean will handle walk duty, Polo will hide under Butterbean, Marco will provide surveillance, Walt will manage logistics, and Oscar will monitor the building’s security-camera feeds. Oscar briefly catches himself thinking of the treasure as his rather than theirs. When noises come from the hallway, Polo panics about leaving her button behind, so Marco ties the button to her red string as a necklace. Polo successfully hoists herself under Butterbean’s stomach, and the pets take casual positions as Madison enters. When Madison notices something on the dog’s stomach, Oscar calls for a distraction, and Walt hacks up a hairball. Madison decides to clean it up later and leaves with Butterbean. Before the door closes, Walt props it open with Butterbean’s rawhide chew, and then Walt and Oscar tape over the door latch to prevent it from locking.
In the hallway, Polo and Butterbean realize a critical flaw: Butterbean needs to relieve herself, which would be problematic for Polo. They devise a new plan in which Polo will hide in the lobby while Butterbean goes outside. Inside the apartment, Oscar uses the remote and finds the security feed on the television; he watches as Polo hops off in the lobby and hides behind a potted plant.
In the lobby, the doorman reveals Madison’s name and asks about her aunt, making Madison uncomfortable. Butterbean pretends that she is about to urinate in the lobby to get the doorman moving. Outside, Butterbean searches unsuccessfully for the Coin Man’s scent. When they return to the lobby, Butterbean signals their failure to Polo, who tells her to “[i]nitiate Plan B” (86).
Chapter 7 Summary
Watching the surveillance feed, Oscar, Walt, and Marco conclude that the mission has failed. Just as Oscar prepares to turn off the television, he sees Polo dash into the open elevator, and then Butterbean jerks her leash from Madison’s hand, runs wildly around the lobby, and dives into the elevator as the doors close. Inside the elevator, Polo climbs onto Butterbean’s head and presses buttons for every floor. They execute Plan B: At each floor, Polo keeps the elevator door open while Butterbean runs into the hallway to sniff under each apartment door. In the pets’ apartment, the others hear the commotion and realize that a new plan is underway.
Butterbean and Polo search each floor. At the top floor, which has only two apartments, Butterbean finally recognizes the Coin Man’s smell. Madison, having run up the stairs, bursts into the hallway and hugs Butterbean in relief. As Madison untangles her leash, the second apartment door opens. A tall man with blue eyes stares down at them. It is the Coin Man, and he tells Madison to leave. Frightened, she rushes into the elevator with Butterbean, where Polo climbs back under Butterbean’s stomach to hide. Butterbean confirms to Polo that the man was the Coin Man and that the encounter was bad.
Chapter 8 Summary
Back in the apartment, the pets act normally around Madison, who takes an unusually long time cleaning cages and refreshing supplies. Polo observes that Madison seems reluctant to leave. After Madison finally departs, Polo and Butterbean recount their adventure and the discovery of the Coin Man’s location. Oscar identifies the target as apartment B on the top floor and outlines the next phase: surveillance to locate the coins. He explains that they need Marco and Polo to perform this “legwork,” which Marco misinterprets as physical exercise, and Walt clarifies that they need the rats to enter the Coin Man’s apartment. Polo is terrified at the prospect, but Oscar and Walt reassure her that they will only go when the man is gone and that the rats are the only ones small enough to fit under the door.
They establish a new plan with emergency signals if the man returns: Butterbean will howl into the elevator shaft, and Oscar will fly outside to peck on the windows. After waiting three hours and watching the surveillance feed, they finally identify the Coin Man leaving the building. Walt carries Marco and Polo on her back to the top floor. After three attempts to find an empty elevator, they reach the Coin Man’s door. Marco tries to slide underneath but gets stuck. Polo also tries and fails. The plan collapses; the rats are too large to fit under the door.
Chapter 9 Summary
Walt and the rats return, and Walt announces that a new plan is needed. Oscar apologizes to the rats for not checking the door gap size, and Walt suggests that they use the building’s air vents instead. She shows them a floor-level vent behind the sofa, explaining that she has been loosening its screws for months as a potential hiding place. Marco confirms that he and Polo can easily fit inside the vents. Butterbean provides the building layout, confirming that the Coin Man’s apartment is directly above theirs, and lists the eighth-floor apartments by scent to help the rats navigate.
Marco and Polo enter the vents and begin climbing, but they get distracted by a corn-chip smell and become lost. They end up at a vent grate looking into the apartment of Bob, the maintenance guy. Bob spots them, yells, and lunges for the grate as they flee up another shaft. On an unknown floor, they encounter Wallace, a strange rat living in the vents. Wallace reveals that he is a former pet named Fuzzy who escaped into the vents after a child squeezed him too hard. Marco tells Wallace about their treasure-hunting mission. When Polo asks for directions to the top-floor apartment B, Wallace warns them to stay away from that apartment and its occupant. However, he agrees to show them the way to the eighth floor. After Wallace leaves, the rats check apartment grates to get their bearings and see Madison in an apartment by herself. They speculate that she lives there. When Madison gets her jacket and keys, they realize that she is coming to care for them and that they have been gone too long.
Chapter 10 Summary
Panicked, Marco and Polo race up the final vent shaft to the Coin Man’s apartment. Meanwhile, in Mrs. Food’s apartment, Madison arrives. Oscar, Walt, and Butterbean realize that the rats are aren’t back yet. Butterbean slams into Madison and performs an exaggerated need-to-urinate dance, but Madison insists that she check on all the pets before she takes the dog outside. Walt positions herself in front of the empty rat aquarium to block Madison’s view. As Madison moves toward it, Oscar screeches for a distraction. Walt pushes a glass of water off the table, and Madison dives to catch it before it shatters. The distraction works, and Madison quickly takes Butterbean out for her walk.
In the top-floor vent, Marco and Polo look into the Coin Man’s apartment and find it unexpectedly boring and beige, not the criminal lair they expected. They do, however, see a second man inside, one with shaggy-hair and brown eyes; he takes a duffel bag from an end table and dumps a large pile of gold coins onto the coffee table. Marco and Polo celebrate finding the treasure but are immediately daunted by the size and weight of the bag.
In the apartment, Oscar and Walt worry as they hear Madison and Butterbean returning. Just as the door opens, Marco and Polo scramble out of the vent. Walt leaps onto Madison’s chest and wraps herself around Madison’s head, disorienting her. The rats successfully make it back into their aquarium and pretend to be asleep. A flustered Madison checks on the pets and quickly leaves. Once secure, Polo announces that they have problems.
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
The failure of Oscar’s initial, rigidly structured plans facilitates the emergence of collective agency, developing the theme of Agency and Ingenuity in the Face of Powerlessness. Oscar’s detailed reconnaissance mission collapses when confronted with Butterbean’s biological needs. This oversight forces Butterbean and Polo to improvise “Plan B,” a spontaneous mission of their own design that shifts the group’s dynamic from a top-down command structure to a collaborative one. The characters lowest in the initial hierarchy—the dog and the rat—become the mission’s primary drivers, demonstrating ingenuity born of necessity. Their success in locating the Coin Man validates their adaptive approach over Oscar’s inflexible planning, suggesting that effective action in vulnerable situations arises not from a single vision but from the group’s pooled, adaptable intelligence.
This redistribution of agency is accompanied by a deconstruction of Oscar’s leadership, revealing the quiet competence of other characters. Oscar’s authority is undermined by planning failures, most notably when the rats cannot fit under the Coin Man’s door. His subsequent apology, in which he admits, “That was a lapse on my part” (95), transforms him from an arrogant commander into a fallible team member. This humility contrasts sharply with Walt’s foresight; her revelation that she has been loosening the screws on a floor vent for months repositions her from a logistical facilitator to a long-term strategist. The narrative juxtaposes Oscar’s performative leadership with Walt’s quiet preparedness, suggesting that survival depends on multiple forms of intelligence.
The building’s hidden spaces mirror the pets’ own concealed intelligence, developing the theme of Deception and the Unreliability of Appearances. To mask their true capabilities, the pets must constantly perform normalcy for Madison by creating elaborate distractions. This literal deception is mirrored by their discovery of the building’s vents, a secret network that allows Marco and Polo to subvert their powerlessness and gain crucial intelligence. Inside this hidden world, they find that the Coin Man’s apartment is not a criminal den but a surprisingly boring space, reinforcing that danger can hide behind a mundane facade. Their surveillance also uncovers that Madison lives by herself, reframing her as another vulnerable individual whose circumstances parallel their own.
The introduction of Wallace, a former pet living as a fugitive in the vents, expands this exploration of hidden worlds. Wallace embodies the precariousness of the pets’ situation, representing a potential future of isolation. His existence confirms that the building contains social structures unknown to its human inhabitants, and his terror of the Coin Man elevates the threat that this antagonist poses to their mission. Wallace’s presence transforms the vents from a plot device into a space populated by the displaced—a physical manifestation of the situation threatening all the protagonists.
The narrative structure, built around the heist, juxtaposes the mission’s high stakes with the mundane, often comical, realities of the animal protagonists. The formal language of a heist—“reconnaissance,” “surveillance,” “target”—is consistently undercut by humorous, species-specific problems, such as Marco misinterpreting “legwork” as physical exercise or the initial plan being thwarted by Butterbean’s need to urinate. This technique creates a tone that engages with serious themes of abandonment and survival without becoming overly grim. The use of shifting points of view generates dramatic irony and suspense, as the reader is aware of Marco and Polo’s perilous journey while Oscar and Walt orchestrate diversions. The menacing appearance of the Coin Man, however, punctuates the humor with genuine threat, reminding the reader that the stakes remain critically high.
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