It’s a (line)ar twine about fees!
There is one unique solution to this puzzle, assigning each cat at most one sum of money from each point in the story.
That is:
| Ace | Bob | Clawl |
|---|---|---|
| 52 | 6 | 3 |
| 125 | 57 | 0 |
| 40 | 39 | 1 |
| 43 | 0 | 2 |
| 29 | 5 | 34 |
| 108 | 77 | 15 |
| 73 | 81 | 38 |
| 87 | 42 | 37 |
| 26 | 48 | 85 |
And if you take each number and index it into the text (without punctuation), you get:
| Ace | Bob | Clawl |
|---|---|---|
| R | B | L |
| E | L | |
| I | E | E |
| M | X | |
| B | T | P |
| U | R | E |
| R | A | N |
| S | V | S |
| A | E | E |