Taking place at a rural town called Maiden Eggesford, the story involves a plan by Bertie's Aunt Dahlia to kidnap a cat so that she can win a wager.

On the way, Bertie sees Vanessa Cook, a headstrong girl he once proposed to but no longer wants to marry, leading a protest march.

Jeeves is disappointed that they must cancel their upcoming trip to New York, but has the consolation that he will see his aunt in Maiden Eggesford.

Seeing a black cat with white fur on its chest and nose, Bertie pets it and moves to hold it.

"If you think that caused the blush of shame to mantle her cheek, you don't know much about aunts.

Cook brings the cat back to Potato Chip while Plank leaves to fetch the police.

For example, Bertie uses three abbreviations in a passage in chapter 3: So far, I said to myself, as I put back the receiver, so g. I would have preferred, of course, to be going to the aged relative's home, where Anatole her superb chef dished up his mouth-waterers, but we Woosters can rough it, and life in a country cottage with the aged r just around the corner would be a very different thing from a country c without her coming through with conversation calculated to instruct, elevate, and amuse.

Bertie references this quotation many times, as in chapter 19 of Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, when he sees the stolen cat wandering in while Cook and Plank are on the premises: "I looked at it with a wild surmise, as silent as those bimbos upon the peak in Darien".

[5] In chapter 7, when Bertie is asked by Vanessa to hold Orlo's letters for her to pick up, Bertie states: "The idea of her calling at the cottage daily, with Orlo Porter, already heated to boiling point, watching its every move, froze my young blood and made my two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, as I have heard Jeeves put it".

Bertie then tells her Orlo is in the village, and describes her reaction: "I have said that her face had hardened as the result of going about the place socking policemen, but now it had gone all soft.

And while her two eyes didn't actually start from their spheres, they widened to about the size of regulation golf balls, and a tender smile lit up her map".

Near the end of the novel, when Jeeves finds Bertie tied and gagged, he frees him and offers him coffee.

And make it strong,' I said, hoping that it would take the taste of Plank's tobacco pouch away.

Jeeves is a close parallel to Holmes, since he is the problem solver, while Bertie resembles Watson, being the admiring onlooker who chronicles their adventures.

The most extended Holmes-Watson style conversation between Bertie and Jeeves occurs in Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, chapter 5, when Jeeves knows why Cook has accused Bertie of stealing his cat, even though he was not on the scene and has never met Cook: "I think I can explain, sir.

I felt like Doctor Watson hearing Sherlock Holmes talking about the one hundred and forty-seven varieties of tobacco ash and the time it takes parsley to settle in the butter dish.

[9] Wodehouse's notes suggest that he initially wrote the novel's basic action and dialogue, then added humorous lines and quotations later.

[10] The Briscoe family and the town of Maiden Eggesford that feature in this novel had appeared previously in the Drones Club short story "Tried in the Furnace" (1935).