A dog sits miserably in a flat while his owner ignores him, preferring to spend time playing video games. And a cat finds herself ignored when a baby comes along.

The only solace the two pets have is the soothing sound of the music played from the apartment below. Then the musician packs up and leaves for Italy ... and thus begins the story of Stan and Mabel.

Stan And Mabel is the latest book from illustrator and writer Jason Chapman, who was brought up in Bradford, and follows Stan (the dog) and Mabel (the cat) as they take matters into their own hands in search of music.

Along the way, they pick up a variety of four-legged friends, and by the time they reach the vaunted La Scala opera house in Italy, they have become the first animal orchestra – and take the music world by storm.

Chapman beautifully illustrates his book with a combination of painted backgrounds and sketched animals, and like his debut book Ted, Bo And Diz: The First Adventure, it features his characters overcoming adversity to triumph. Chapman, 40, first began to love art when he was perhaps five years old, watching rapt as his Uncle Tony drew Concorde planes.

Growing up in Wibsey, Bradford, he attended Yorkshire Martyrs school and cites encouragement from teachers there, including Gordon Bostock, as well as his family, as providing the impetus for him to seek a career in illustration. He says: “I’m not sure what age I was when I realised you could pursue a career in art, it was probably when I first went to see Hockney paintings at Cartwright Hall. I realised he was from Bradford, like me. It was very inspiring.”

Now living in Devon, Bradford City fan Chapman regularly comes back to the district to visit his family. He did a foundation course at Bradford College of Art, and later studied at Camberwell College of Arts in London, painting portraits to pay his way.

He entered the world of commercial illustration, but long harboured dreams to write and draw his own children’s book, which solidified when his own children came along.

“I always wanted to do a kids’ book,” he says. “That was the Holy Grail for me. It was only when my own children came along and I started to look at some of the books that were on the market that I realised I could probably have a go, that the time was right.”

Chapman has always been a storyteller as well as an artist, inventing stories for his three children at bedtimes. He remembers well the germ of inspiration that became Ted, Bo And Diz.

He says: “We were on holiday in Wales and my son George was in his dinghy in the shallows.

“He was maybe two or three at the time, and I was holding the dinghy and looking out to sea and started thinking how wonderful and scary it would be if you suddenly saw an iceberg.”

He told the story to George later that day, using his son’s characters as inspiration for the protagonists. That story eventually became Ted, Bo And Diz, the adventure of three friends who find a family of polar bears a long way from home.

Chapman doesn’t shy away from confronting thorny topics in his books – not in a beat-kids-over-the-head-with-social-issues kind of way, but in a subtle manner.

At the beginning of Stan and Mabel, doggie Stan is miserable because he’s neglected. And Ted, Bo and Diz has an ecological message about global warming.

As his children – George is now eight, with two sisters Iris, five and Oriel, three – grew up, Chapman continued to tell them stories at night.

Some of those became the basis for his latest book, Stan And Mabel.

Chapman’s style has moved on from the soft-edged fluffiness of Ted, Bo And Diz to a more sketchy style, informed by his role as official illustrator for the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in London, a role that came about when they saw some of his illustrations of dogs and asked him to document some of the home’s canine and feline friends in art form.

Chapman, who met his wife Jeanette at art school, also provides the art for children’s charity the NSPCC’s annual letter from Santa. He says: “I worked closely with Father Christmas. It made about £1 million for the charity this time.”

Despite now living in Devon, with a studio where he holes himself up to create his works not far from his home, Chapman still has a soft spot for Yorkshire.

Search Stan and Mabel closely and you’ll find the odd Bradford City shirt in crowd scenes, and when the animal orchestra reaches the dizzy heights of a world tour, one of their sold-out venues on an advertising poster is none other than the Bradford Alhambra.

With a second Stan And Mabel book in the offing, and another two-book deal just signed with Random House, Chapman’s definitely on song – even if his animal musicians might be sometimes out of tune.