In a city ravaged by crime and corruption, 13-year-old orphan Caw's only friends are the murder of crows he has lived with since his parents flung him from their house aged only five. Caw lives in a treehouse in an abandoned city park, surviving on scraps of food and only communicating with his three crows. But a jailbreak at the prison forces him into contact with other humans -- particularly a girl called Lydia, who is attacked by the escaped prisoners...

An overly alarmed Chester the cat predicts a gruesome fate for the pets in the Monroe household when a writer of juvenile horror fiction and his bird companion stay overnight.