WAT Kats: The Radical Squadron was set in a world where cats played the role of humans. In Megakat City, law enforcement was handled by the Enforcers, a police organization under the leadership of Commander Feral. In the process of apprehending a criminal, two Enforcers by the names of Chance Furlong and Jake Clawson disobeyed an order from Feral and were subsequently sacked after the jet they were flying crashed into Enforcer Headquarters (an accident, coincidentally, caused by Feral when he clipped their plane with his own while trying to steal their kill). Blaming the insubordinate pilots for the destruction of the building, Feral not only kicked them off the force, but assigned them to run a salvage yard until they paid back in full the cost of rebuilding the headquarters.

Left on their own to operate Jake & Chance's Garage, the former officers put their mechanical skills to good use. Using discarded parts from the salvage yard, the two assembled a custom-made jet fighter they called Turbokat that was stored and launched from a hangar bay hidden below the yard. Operating outside the law, Chase and Jake continued to fight crime using their superior skills and weaponry whenever the Enforcers were overmatched. To keep the proper law enforcement authorities off their back, Chase and Jake adopted the masked aliases T-Bone and Razor while on missions, which they mostly conducted from the cockpit of their jet while tearing through the skies of Megakat City (several smaller vehicles were built into the jet that could be detached and used to navigate on land or through water). Known as the SWAT Kats, their interference was unappreciated by Commander Feral, who resented the vigilantes for showing up his Enforcers. When a case went wrong, Feral never hesitated to place blame on the SWAT Kats, regardless of fault.

The SWAT Kats had one powerful ally: Deputy Mayor Callie Briggs. The complete opposite of her lazy and self-serving superior Mayor Manx, Callie could always be found where she was most needed. She fully trusted and supported the SWAT Kats, and although she was unaware of their true identities, she had a direct phone line to their underground headquarters for placing emergency calls. Unbeknownst to Miss Briggs, the mechanics she used for her car repairs were the very same vigilante pilots that continually saved the city.

In spite of the objections raised by Commander Feral to the SWAT Kats' interference in matters of the law, without their help Megakat City would almost certainly have fallen under the control of such crazy criminals as the undead time manipulator Pastmaster, the robotic gangsters Mac and Molly Metallikat, the biochemist turned lizard Dr. Viper, the master of black magic Dark Kat, and numerous other villains who made less regular appearances. In the final analysis, the crime-fighting methods used by the SWAT Kats may not have been tidy, but surely a few missile craters and blown-up buildings was a small price to pay for the continued freedom of workaday felines everywhere.