Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties by Dav Pilkey is the third book of the Dog Man series. At the end of the last book, the evil fish Flippy was defeated. In this book, Petey buys a clone machine and intends to make a servant, but instead of an identical cat coming out, a kid pops out- named Li'l Petey. He meets Dog Man at one point and they become friends. Meanwhile, some scientists are doing research on Flippy’s brain and Dog Man is in charge of guarding them. But he manages to lose the fish, who winds up in a living spray factory and is reborn. Flippy uses living spray on many buildings and starts a rampage across the city to get revenge on Dog Man and his friends. When the cops hear about the rampage, Dog Man and his companions go to fight Flippy, but they are losing. Li'l Petey comes to his rescue, causing Flippy to redirect his attention and look for Li'l Petey. The real Petey doesn’t want his "child" to get hurt, so he disguises himself as the kid to trick Flippy. The fish then uses telekinesis to raise Petey and prepares to drop him into a volcano. Li'l Petey and Dog Man race to save him. Will Flippy get his revenge? Or will Li'l Petey save his dad?
This book was very interesting. In the intro, George and Harold say that they were reading classics. The name of this book was likely modeled after the classic A Tale of Two Cities. I found it interesting that Dog Man and his friends said some quotes that were also voiced in the aforementioned classic. At one point, Petey turns into a good guy, which is similar to a character in the classic. All these subtle overlapping details made the book slightly more intriguing. Finally, there were multiple amusing parts in A Tale of Two Kitties, typical of Pilkey’s books.