Pretty darn cute indeed, but I gotta say -- I find it weird the moment an animal gets to communicate in a story, it also immediately gets a lot smarter. In one of the chapters, the animals even played through a boardgame. That's not something an animal can do, now can it?
At that point, when an animal gets that smart -- it's no longer an animal. It's a small child that the big human takes care of, and that's a shame. The story loses its charm that way in the long run.